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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 19, 2002)
inly n ?nn? j — t — t 35 iris nil W I SusiW8 ▼ GOT BMW ? fe enthusiastically maintain your BMW so you can be a driving enthusiast ERVICE • REPAIR • PROFESSIONAL T he M ars C anon Guild Theatre, July 19; Whitsell Auditorium, July 20 elieve it or not, Japan has even fewer female film directors than the United States of America. So it’s fortunate that Shiori Kazama has released her third feature, Kasei No Kanon or The Mars Canon (also known as Canon on Tuesday). Even better, it includes a les bian relationship, albeit a rather unsatisfying one. Kinuko is a 29-year-old beauty who’s having an affair with a 40-something married man. They see each other every Tuesday night, and he appears to have no intention of leaving his wife, remarking to Kinuko, “1 love you; isn’t that enough?” It isn’t really enough, and Kinuko pines for him, seemingly devoid of other relationships, until she meets up with Hijiri, an old acquain tance, and her friend Manabe, a male street poet. The pair try to get Kinuko to leave her lover immediately, both for basically the same reason— each one wants her. This sounds like an amusing love rectangle B with plenty of space for barbs and sexual explo ration, hut Kazama’s goal isn’t merriment, it’s postulating on devoting your life to impossible relationships. Kinuko won’t give up a man who cannot commit to her entirely; Hijiri pursues a woman who has shown no interest beyond friendship; Manabe tries for both women unsuc cessfully. When Kinuko does switch lovers, it’s out of desperation and not without regret. At a full two hours, there’s very little action beyond constant anguish among characters, most notably the two women. This extremely slow pace, as well as a lack of close-up shots and scenes of a rather bare-bones Tokyo, parallels Kinuko’s existence— she plods along, taking no real steps to improve her completely empty life. W hile the pacing works to instill this sense of emptiness, it also works on one’s nerves. Scenes could have been cut back a lot without losing aesthetic or narrative purpose. And the lesbian character is portrayed as somewhat pathetic and unstable a la Basic Instinct. Overall, The Mars Canon is successful in estab lishing its point hut unsuccessful in its method. — Lisa Bradshaw > 03 . 232.5545 2 2 4 2 N W illiam s (N ear Broadway & 1-5) Portland • 9 7 2 2 7 www.thebmwshop.biz It* 4- M y P tu w + sU Sexy Gifts Exciting Ideas and Unique Apparatus - Corner of Sandy Blvd. & NE 64th 3 1 0 6 NE 64th Portland, OR 9 7 2 1 3 503 280-8080 - Feel More Like Yourself * • O U T ON DVD Oregon M etrosexuality TLA Releasing ast on the (high) heels of Q ueer as Folk, and in some ways a corrective to it, comes another homo T V show from Britain’s always edgy Channel 4, Metrosexuality. The series was commissioned, according to Channel 4 ’s Adam Barker, “because of its vivid and funny take on the sexual arid mat ing dilemmas of today." One of the criticisms of Q ueer as Folk was that it was too white with no dykes; Metrosexuality opts for the opposite in its vision of a manically polyracial, polysexual Britain. Kwane (Noel Clarke), a 17-year-old straight boy, lusts after his classmate Asha (Rebecc^i Varney). He has no mother but rather two dads, Max (Rikkie Beadle-Blair, who created the series) and Jordan (Karl Collins). The dads are separated, and Kwane schemes to get them hack together, even though Jordan is dating a hunky honky and Max is trawling the personal ads for a new squeeze. Complicating matters are Kwane’s gay best friend’s obsession with daddy Max; love trouble between Max’s sister and her girlfriend; and a dizzying variety of other relationships, trysts and tricks covering most of the possible permu tations of straight and queer, male and female, white and black. F Anyone put off by the superfi ciality of Q ueer as Folk won’t he reassured by Metrosexuality. This seldom-funny comedy is frantic and shrill, with a nonstop stream of cutesy effects like words on the screen and faces appearing sud denly in heart-shaped inserts to address the camera. Beadle-Blair’s dialogue (he also wrote the 1996 feature Stonewall) is delivered at machine-gun speed, perhaps to cover a lack of inspiration. The acting would be forgettable if it weren’t so loud— all snapping fingers, feather boas and carry-on. Most of the show’s energy seems to have gone into the sets, couture, hairdos and thun derous soundtrack (by Moby, among others), which do represent a veritable catalog of mod em queer-glam style. Intriguing, hut not enough to redeem the rest. Some of us were surprised that Q ueer as Folk made the transition to U.S. television (even cable), hut it seems even less likely that this series will follow suit. Laudable as its goals are— who doesn’t want to bust up the white- boy monopoly in queer media?— Metrosexuality just isn’t up to the job. 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