HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH -------------------------
After undergoing a botched sex change operation, Hansel becomes Hedwig, marries and American GI and leaves East Berlin behind for rural Kansas. Abandoned in a trailer park, Hedwig turns to his love of glitter rock and creates a goth icon out of seventeen year old Army brat Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt, "Finding Forrester") who steals Hedwig's music and leaves her. Writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell adapts his lyricist/composer Stephen Trask's smash off-Broadway musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," for the big screen.
The rock musical is created anew with John Cameron Mitchell's dynamic, fearlessly individual vision and Stephen Trask's perfectly evocative music and lyrics. "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" plays like a well-established cult film the first time you see it.
Present day Hedwig is obsessed with her ungrateful creation, Tommy Gnosis. As he tours huge rock arenas, Hedwig and her band, The Angry Inch, follow playing a chain of seafood restaurants called Bilgewater's. Hedwig's manager (Andrea Martin) futilely tries to keep the still lovesick Hedwig from stalking Tommy while negotiating a law suit against him. Meanwhile, Hedwig's husband and backup singer Yitzhak (played by a woman, Miriam Shor) pines over Hedwig's wigs while she pines over Tommy.
The stunningly androgynous Mitchell spins Hedwig's tale of two halves straining to become one with wit, intelligence and bawdy humor (after his botched op, Hedwig observes 'My first day as a woman and already it's that time of the month'). He's taken his own experiences as an Army brat and melded them with a German babysitter he once knew to create Hedwig, introduced as young Hansel (Ben Mayer-Goodman) whose home town is itself divided in two by the Berlin Wall. Weaned on Armed Forces radio, Hedwig (Hansel's mother's name, which he adopts along with her passport) worships a personal pantheon comprised of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
After a hilarious Gummi Bear courtship by the fickle Luther, Hedwig finds herself in a dead end trailer park, ironically left for a young boy. Plucky Hedwig forms a band with Korean Army brides while sexually servicing their husbands for cash. Once her eyes lock with Tommy's, 'a seventeen year old classic rock loving Jesus freak with a fish on his truck,' she's lost and quickly seduces him while babysitting his infant sibling. In present day, Hedwig does meet up again with Tommy in ironically similar circumstances before she learns how to heal herself and unite her two halves.
Mitchell hasn't simply recorded his musical, but inventively places his camera and changes his locations (the play is smartly recalled when Hedwig's Kansas trailer wall drops down to transform into a stage for an Angry Inch performance). In addition to the fine work by Directory of Photography Frank DeMarco and Production Designer Therese DePrez ("I Shot Andy Warhol"), costume design by Madonna's personal stylist Arianne Phillips ("The Crow") nails the home made glitter rock look. Wig and Make-up Designer Mike Potter, who designed the original Hedwig look for the stage, repeats his fabulous work for the film.
John Cameron Mitchell's confident, unique voice makes "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" a true American original and the best American movie of the year.
A
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