lune 18.2004 -
FILM
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R EVIEW S
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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
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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
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