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Luster
*
Cinema
Review - September 8, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. USA.
90 minutes. Written and directed by Everett Lewis. Produced by Robert Shulevitz.
Starring Justin Herwick, Shane Powers, B. Wyatt, Pamela Gidley, Sean Thibodeau,
Jonah Blechman, Nicole Dillenberg, Willie Garson, Susannah
Melvoin.
So Playfair and I plodded along to the Showroom,
curious about what the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on Tour would
have to offer. And standing up at the ending of "Luster", walking
out fast and needing cigarettes bad, we gave each other the knowing look
of moviegoers who had just been shell-shocked, and agreed that the movie
was inspiring in a way, because if this is the kind of thing the festival
will show, wannabe filmmakers need not worry. This fest will accept
anything.
This is a terrible movie, but it's bad in the
kind of way that makes you not want to be too hard on it. You know it's never
going to go anywhere. That your review is going to be one of the only ones
on the internet. That the struggling filmmakers will probably be reading
it, and it just wouldn't be right to crank up the poison pen and trample
all over their efforts. It plays like a collection of rookie mistakes --
anyone with too much sincerity and not enough money could make a film like
this, and the biggest emotions it generates are embarrassment and empathetic
concern.
Justin Herwick plays Jackson, a skinny guy who
looks like Sid Vicious with blue hair. Jackson has a job in a cult record
store, but he's a poet, man, and spends less time behind the counter than
ducking out for five-minute breaks that take two hours. He's the lustful
rogue of the title: As the movie opens, he's woken up from an orgy in his
apartment, and before long we're hearing about some dirty-blonde boyish type
who he wants to go to bed with, and in no time at all Jackson's muscular
cousin has come into town, and he has a crush on that guy,
too.
I'm trying to recall the story, but there really
isn't one. This is a character-driven picture, about a journey of self-discovery
that involves lounging around Southern California fleapits and pondering
the meaning of it all in either clichés or silence. I don't know much
about the writer and director, Everett Lewis, but Jackson plays like a
self-obsessed projection of an author; his job is to stand there and look
cool, while marching through situations that show him to be too pure for
this world. There's a spoiled rock star (Willie Garson) who wants to buy
some of his lyrics; the rocker is amazed by their brilliance, and how they
provide enough material for an album, but Jackson shrugs and says, "I wrote
them all this morning." There is a journalist writing an article about the
rocker; Jackson declares him to be full of hackneyed crap. And there are
various randoms, like a geek who keeps coming back to the record shop and
has to be told where to shove it by Jackson, because everyone else just rolls
their eyes.
These characters are all tired, broad sketches:
The singer stomps his feet, talks about how he needs to make more money and
displays a fondness for sexual violence. The magazine writer speaks posh,
pontificates loudly and wows himself with word choices that are old and obvious.
The record store geek thinks he can find Madonna records in a shop that stocks
stuff like Lesbians With Guns, and is dressed in the kind of style that hasn't
been seen anywhere since "Revenge of the Nerds". The scenes where he gets
put down have been done better in countless other movies, not least "High
Fidelity" and "Clerks". If Jackson is such a great guy, why does that have
to be dramatised by showing him to be better than pieces of cardboard? A
character can be intelligent and provocative by pointing out the flaws of
sophisticated people, but not by posing like a rebel and ripping into the
pretensions of stereotypes.
Above it all, "Luster" is just too amateurish.
A lot of the shots are nicely composed, with vibrant colours mixed into a
down-dirty grit that reminds us of indie films from the late 80s and early
90s. But they fit together awkwardly, and sit below a soundtrack so muffled
that I had to strain to hear every bit of mumbling slacker dialogue. Everett
has been making movies for over a decade, but you wouldn't know it from this
project. I admire his determination, but hope he doesn't shop "Luster" around
as some kind of intensely personal underdog masterpiece. He should cut his
losses, move on, and think of this thing as a learning
experience.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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