his subculture, hisses, “TixJay sexual preference,
tomorrow a tattoo." There’s also the loveliest
mother-daughter coming-out scene in lesbian
cinema history (not too sappy, I promise).
Honestly, Kissing is not the perfect lesbian
film. It’s more like the perfect gay film for
straight people to help them feel more comfort
able with the whole thing.
But it’s witty with moments of graceful
insight, and the characters are endearing. It’s
very much worth leaving your too-high expecta
tions at the door.
— LB
Iris
B
ased on John
Bayley’s two
books of
posthumous mem
oirs about his wife,
the late novelist Iris
Murdoch, Richard
Eyre’s film features
Kate Winslet play the
impressive perfor
young Iris Murdoch
mances by Kate
Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Judi Dench and
Jim Broadhent as, respectively, the young and
old Bayley-Murdochs.
Iris (now playing at Fox Tower Cinem as)
shifts evenly through time, from Murdoch’s
twilight as an Alzheimer’s sufferer to her col
legiate days o f courtship with Bayley. They
are depicted here as charmingly eccentric,
smart, sometimes contentious old English
goats whose love for the literary life is all-
consuming. A beautiful sequence featuring
the elderly couple shopping at a modem
supermarket while theorizing about philoso
phies of life is both funny and revealing; the
film would have benefited from more such
well-constructed scenes.
On the days-gone-hy front, Winslet is com
pletely winning, as usual. She also hears an
amazing resemblance to the young Murdoch, a
woman of intellect who, socially speaking,
was— with her open bisexuality and regular
practice of free love— something of a more
pleasant and less selfish version of Anais Nin.
(Murdoch’s great 1967 novel, A Fairly Hon -
ourahle Defeat, is a rarely acknowledged land
mark of literature with its rich, emotionally
complete homosexual characterization).
However beguiling the players, though, Iris
ultimately fails to achieve real impact. It
evokes the feeling that we’re treading much
too lightly over the complex story of this ven
erated novelist, her degenerative disease, her
struggles with love and lust, and her challenge
as a woman to he taken seriously as a writer.
All is included, hut nothing seems genuinely
explored. Eyre’s aim seems to have been preci
sion and completeness rather than feeling or
perspective, as if his movie project was merely
a fact-finding mission.
The actors consistently heat Eyre’s overly
timid atmosphere to convey some energy and
immediacy, and they alone make this a film
worth seeing. Murdoch’s memory and estate
might benefit from the fact that Iris will intro
duce her work to a new audience, hut she
doubtless would have been bemused at best by
Eyre’s silver-screen tiptoeing.
— Christopher McQuain
B u rn t M o n e y
4
ene and Angel are a pair of hank robbers
known as “the twins” operating in Argenti
na circa 1965. Their symbiosis extends to
their sex lives, and the Bonnie and Clyde anti-
hero glamour is cemented when we discover
their bad-boy danger: Nene is a hard-bitten ex-
con, and Angel is tortured by voices in his head.
After a big job goes wrong and police are
killed, the lovers find themselves on the lam.
In true noir fashion, they’re eventually done
in by a dangerous dame, in this case a beauti
ful prostitute.
Director Marcelo Pineyro and writer Marce-
lo Figueras have created a sensuous, overheated
riff on what we’re told in the end credits is a
true story. The staging of the final showdown
with the cops makes for a disappointingly flaci
cid ending; it’s all straightforward action-movie
blare, which seems like a complete failure of
nerve when contrasted with the slow simmer
preceding it.
Up to then, however, Pineyro maintains a
tense, dark and extremely sexy (although not very
P.C.) tension that will he both familiar and wel
come to anyone who enjoys the grimly thrilling,
unrestrained, erotic atmosphere of the great noir
pictures. (Burnt Money plays March 29 to April 4
at Cinema 21. )jn
—CM
N
By Claudia Shear • March 26-April 14,2002
“It’s hard to be funny when
you have to be clean.”
- M iss West
A play about Mae West - the Queen of Quip -
and an unlikely couple who love her. Character,
not caricature, creates a “small marvel of
humor and humanity.” (New York Post)
J u s t O u t & P o rtla n d C e n te r S ta g e invite you to
our G ay & Lesbian Audience night, Tuesday, April
2nd. Mingle with cast, crew and hostess P o is o n
W aters after the show at D ra g o n fish A s ia n Cafe.
can 503.274.6588 &visit w w w . p c s . o r g I Q e n te r
*0*T LANO
Experience the experimental
athaniel Dorsky’s name isn’t automatically
| associated with those of his predecessors,
i queer creators of avant-garde short film
like Kenneth Anger ( Scorpio Rising ) and Jack
Smith (Flaming Creatures). The work of this
artist— who was horn and raised in New Jersey,
joined New York City’s mid-’60s experimental
film juggernaut and now lives and works (along
with fellow filmmaker and his partner of 25
years, Jerome Hiler) in the creative hotbed of
San Francisco— lacks the confrontational
"edge” associated with more storied and well-
known underground gay cinema.
Anger and Smith were staunchly Western
filmmakers, exuberantly playing with and dese
crating pop culture symbols as an act of defiance.
In comparison to theirs, Dorsky’s work could he
described as Eastern-contemplative and anti-
symbolic, more concerned with images them
selves— the actual tangibility of texture, light
and color— than their subjective implications.
Four Wall Cinema’s Luminous Motion: The
Silent Films of Nathaniel Dorsky isn’t a retrospec
tive and doesn’t include his earliest trilogy—
1964 s Ingreen and A Fall Tnp Home and 1965’s
Summmwnd— which recounts his childhood and
adolescence as well as his struggle with then-
taboo homosexuality. Instead, the program con
centrates on three of his more recent films, Varta-
tions, Arbor Vitae and Love’s Refrain; none is more
than a decade old, and they uniformly reflect a
formalist, purist, non-narrative sense of the visual.
It’s a more complete and serious version of
American Beauty’s plea to “look closer.” The
1999 Oscar winner’s emblematic existentialist
image of a floating plastic hag was, in fact, an
homage to Dorsky’s work.
His films are gorgeous, colorful scraphtxiks of
the beauty to be found in the juxtaposition of
everyday images and ridding those images of
their narrative baggage so we can appreciate the
immediate curiosity and strangeness of each iso
lated object. Dorsky’s work might he formal in
intent and rigorous in execution, hut it’s also
quite literally “feel good” cinema— after a view
ing, our visual palette is cleansed, our perspec
tive altered to something approaching serenity.
-C M
L uminous M otion : T he S ilent F ilms of
N athaniel D orsky plays 7:30 p.m. March 18
and 19 at Four Wall Cinema, 425 S.E . Third Ave.
The Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Special thanks to our
show sponsors...
MERRILL
CORPORATION
And GALA night sponsor..
just nm
-
Stage
H. Pat &
Trudy Ritz
V isualize T o u r
/nnw oeaat^
Personal Image Design
• Hair & Wig Styling
• Specializing in Trans-Formation
• Professional Makeup
• Exp. with feature film & T V
• Friendly Private Salon
•
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Creations
EVERY BOOK OF GAY EROTICA
ALWAYS M STOCK!
<@> Paradise Visions. Luscious, explicit new
drawings by Sadao Hasegawa. Exclusive! $50.
<®> Bears on Bears. An oral history of all
things hairy, beefy, masculine, and loving. $15.
<@> Friction 5: Gay Erotic Fiction. Virgins,
vampires, bathhouses, daddies— whew! $16.
505
2 8 6 -7 0 0 0
DOWNTOWN @ 927 SW OAK • 226-8141