NO ORDINARY LOVE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Picture This! Entertainment Director: Doug Witkins Writer: Doug Witkins Cast:Smith Forte, Erika Klein, Robert Pecora, Koing Kuoch, Dan Frank, Mark S. Larson
When a movie is ineptly acted by performers trying to make sense out of silly dialogue, a director can sometimes excuse himself by suggesting that his movie is campy. Camp may or may not have been writer-director Doug Witkins's motive in bringing "No Ordinary Love" to the screen, where it apparently received some favorable reviews by critics in Melbourne, Australia. But this work by Witkins, while showing some promise, is obviously a debut for the man with its risible situations, convoluted developments, and soap-opera contrivances. It may achieve some success in the gay circuit, having already been introduced to the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, but while "No Ordinary Love" will have a regular, commercial screening in cities like New York, it will probably not entertain much crossover appeal.
By bringing together a diversity of characters in one large house, young people who have little regard for one another's privacy, Witkins virtually guarantees that their coming together, so to speak, will produce melodramatic outcomes. While its principal character Kevin (Smith Forte) looks like the model of ethical behavior, he is drawn by circumstances into predicaments of both criminal and sexual natures. His roommates include Wendy (Erika Klein), a punk singer whose guitar playing frequently disturbs Vince (Koing Kuoch), a Cambodian on a scholarship. Vince spends what could be valuable study time by cross-dressing and virtually asking for trouble with the local gangbangers who take his habits as a personal insult. His other roommates include Andy (Robert Pecora), a bisexual exotic dancer who could be the model for New York's Times Square underwear posters; Ben, a tubby bank teller with a secret stash of cash in the cellar; and Ramon (Antonio Rosas), a Latino who discovers that his anti- gay stance may be merely a projection of his own homosexual desires. The movie makes use a villainous drunk Tom (Dan Frank), who either fell or was pushed to his death early on but whose ghostly presence has an unnerving effect on the household.
If the movie works at all, it succeeds as a sendup of TV soaps. Stereotypical older women include a bourgeois mother, Rona (Kathleen Gibson), who is aware that her son is homosexual but nonetheless expect him to make her a grandmother; and Ramon's mom, Gloria (Marina Palmier), who is fooling around with a guy who is young enough to be her son. The gamin-like Wendy sums up the wisdom of the production with her brand of logic: since Wendy loved the now-deceased Tom; and since Kevin also loved Tom; therefore Wendy and Kevin should get together. Q.E.D. Ben, the new roommate with an infectious laugh, an obsession about cleanliness, and some dirty money hidden under the floorboards, brings amusement to the movie and Vince evokes sympathy as the heartbroken, babyfaced chap with a longing for the Latino gangbanger who saved him from being beaten to death.
One suspects that a young Pedro Almodovar had this sort of account in mind while he was first sketching out his plans. "No Ordinary Love" is just that, a blueprint with a pot pourri of melodramatic elements. Mr. Witkins has his work cut out for him. Not Rated. Running time: 104 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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