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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 18, 2004)
lune 18.2004 - FILM out out out 55 out I R EVIEW S mm» I W m m#* m m '«wJP M ID W E S TE R N B E E F G ypsy 83 June 25 to July 1, Hollywood Theatre ere all familiar with Goth, the subculture of pale-complexioned, raven-haired, self consciously doomy nonconformists whose disappoint ment at life’s unfair ness is brazenly worn upon their sleeves. This disenfran chised-friendly hut terminally self-serious sensibility begs— nay, demands— our pity, and it’s an easy target; there’s been a Goth Director Todd Stephens’ sketch on Saturday Night Uve and a rather mean but very tunny and surprisingly knowledgeable Goth-mocking South Park episode. To un-Gothly paraphrase Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being Goth. With friends like Gypsy 83, however, the Goths don’t need any enemies. Wntten and directed by Todd Stephens (Edge d f Seventeen), it relates the misadventures of 20-something Gypsy and her queer high school senior friend, Clive. Gypsy’s Stevie Nicks fixation— including a penchant for shawls, witchy gowns and lots and lots of twirling— and her friend’s black- clad, lipsticked gayness do not help them fit into Sandusky, Ohio, where A-student Clive lives with his befuddled family, and Gypsy for lornly sings the songs of her deceased mother with her dad, a washed-up musician. The pair spontaneously head to New York, where Gypsy will participate in the Night of 1000 Stevies, a drag/lip-sync parade of unhealthy obsession. (There is, glaringly, a total absence from the film of any actual Stevie Nicks music.) On their eventful road trip, they meet a seductive lounge singer at a karaoke bar, Gypsy has a tempestuous affair with a wayward Amish hunk (who’s subjected to a sort of Goth Eye for the Amish Guy makeover), and Clive loses his virginity to a duplicitous, self-deluded frat boy. There is soapy, door-slamming, tantrum throwing self-discovery. There are grandstand ing rants wherein Gypsy and/or Clive telegraph the banal theories of the screenwriter. It all leads up to a forgettable, bittersweet ending, complete with tacky slow motion. Sara Rue (from T V ’s Less Than Perfect) and Kett Turton are good actois, but they’re jerked around by Stephens like marionettes at the hands of an evil puppeteer. Even the few well- conceived scenes, including Clive’s rejection by snobbish NYC Goths, are constructed and shot in a manner ranging from unimaginative to just poor. Stephens’ script lacks any perspective or control and seems to suffer from Tourette’s syn drome; everything in it feels blurted out for no apparent reason. Is a movie about the emotional and sexual coming of age of a gay Goth and his motherless female buddy a worthwhile proposition? I think it is. But having it made by people who evi dently believe that throwing in some fine music by Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure is all it takes should tremendously dis please the target queer/Goth audience, for whom Gypsy 83 will be like having their life stories reduced to a trashy, dignity-robbing movie of the week. — Christopher McQuam G U L F P R AW N S W AUSTRALIAN LOBSTER P O R T L A N D P R IC E S IN S T E A D O F C H IC A G O ’S You don't have to go to a Chicago Steak House to get a quality meal. Come to Sayler’s. For over 55 years w e’ve been providing Portland families a great steak dinner at a fair price. So that one day, you can make a trip to, say, the midwest. old co o to ? menni 105th & SuE. Stark 5 0 3 -2 5 2 -4 1 7 1 & Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy at Griffith Dr 5 0 3 -6 4 4 -1 4 9 2 love letter to Goth is pure spam T he 4 th M an June 19, Whitsell Auditorium T he 4th Man, the last Dutch-language film directed by the (in)famous Paul Verhoeven before he went Hollywood with Showgirls and Starship Troopers, presents us with a love triangle involving two men, one woman and no insurmountable gender-based inhibitions. It probably seemed daring for its day (1983), and, unlike Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, which was boycotted by some groups in 1991 because of its psycho, murderous queer females, The 4th Man (which plays as part of the Northwest Film Center’s The Human Dutch series) seems to have been viewed as benign or even queer positive. W hat’s missing from Verhoeven’s early exer cise in gaudiness, however, isn’t a thoughtful or cogent take on sexual orientation or gender politics, which the film makes no pretense of offering, but the sort of fine-tuned, winking, shamelessly cinephilic sensibility that better directors like Brian De Palma have parlayed into the stylish art of Cinema as Dirty Joke. Verhoeven’s European work tends to be more highly regarded than his big-hudget camp epics, but there is no discernible difference between the slick, ’80s-vintage TV-commercial feel of The 4th Man and that of, say, Flashdance, also released in ’83. Instead of the glossily photographed, technically skilled and almost surrealistically cheesy depiction of a working- class woman who becomes a ballerina via dancing in bars, Verhoeven gives us the glossily photographed, technically skilled and almost surrealistically cheesy depiction of a disheveled yet overconfident gay writer who gets involved with a seductive female fan, then finds himself caught in a boiling cauldron of polysexual erot ic intrigue that might just be the death of him. There is a constant barrage of hilarious, lit eral-minded visual symbolism, including spiders spinning webs (like a dangerous temptress lur ing her prey— get it?) and more inexplicably portentous Catholic imagery than a Madonna video. The tone is light enough to tip us off that Verhoeven doesn’t take most of this very un- serious stuff any more seriously than he should. Nonetheless, instead of the self-awareness and relish for the movie’s underlying tawdriness that might’ve made it sensational, we get an unsatisfying bag of tricks, and The 4th Man meets the fate of so many proficient but mediocre films: It’s not much more than a commercial for itself. — CM J H J O IV 8338 N. LomBaRÒ Tender tAe Srcd^c 503-247-1066 ■ 3 0 f S S WfoVláM \ LAUREIWOOD PUBLI C H O U S E 4 BR E WE R Y 1 \ NOW TWO GREAT RESTAURANTS! 8.5 553 www.< a in el a c c d b r e w p u b . c o m P h one O rders 503.233.4344 M o n d a y - F r i d a y 1OAM-3PM 1 226 SE 7 t h AVE P o r t l a n d B ig , c h e a p s a n d w ic h es ! S p e c ia lty S a n d w ic h e s - S u b s - E spr esso 2 9 3 4 NE A l b e r t a S t 5 0 3 . 282.0600
