HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH Rated R, 95 minutes Directed by John Cameron Mitchell WHEN, WHERE: Opens today at the Jean Cocteau
You'd be angry too. Hedwig used to be Hansel, an East German boy of confused sexuality who fell in love with an American sergeant (Maurice Dean Wint). In order to pass the physical to get married, he had to undergo a sex change operation (`To be free, one must give up a little piece of oneself,' his mother counseled). The operation went awry, and the residue was the eponymous unit of measure.
Writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell created this rock fantasy of gender identity Off-Broadway, where it became a cult hit, and he has transferred it with notable success to the big screen (it has garnered a mantel-full of awards, from Berlin to Sundance.) The movie fairly bristles with originality and energy; it stands out from the wasteland of failed summer blockbusters like a whirling dervish in a Benedictine monastery. Originality and energy in themselves aren't enough to insure a worthwhile movie, but here they're buttressed by a pretty solid serving of talent as well.
Hedwig and her backup group the Angry Inch, and their manager (the wonderful Andrea Martin) are touring a series of salad bar restaurants called Bilgewater's, playing to scattered audiences of bored and bemused burghers, always in the same cities where rock megastar Tommy Gnossis (Michael Pitt) is playing to arenas packed with adoring fans. In a series of songs and flashbacks we piece together Hedwig's checkered history: molested by his G.I. father, neglected by his East German mother (`Our apartment was so small mother made me play in the oven'), inspired by the music of American masters (Toni Tenille, Debbie Boone) on Armed Forces Radio, wooed, semi-transgendered, wed, and then abandoned in a Kansas trailer park by her soldier boy, forced to shift for herself as a nanny for yet another military man, whose born-again teenage son Tommy becomes her musical protégé and almost lover. Together they write songs and create his Tommy Gnossis persona, but when he discovers her angry inch and departs in revulsion, he takes her songs and all the credit and becomes a star. One question that nags is why, with the same material, Tommy is a superstar and Hedwig is playing the salad circuit. It would be hard to make the case that gender confusion has been a drag on success in the rock era.
`Hedwig' is all about duality and wholeness. With the help of some kaleidoscopically imaginative animation by Emily Hubley (daughter of veteran animators Faith and John Hubley), it draws on sources as diverse as Plato and the Berlin wall to explore the case that all of us are divided, all of us contain masculine and feminine, all of us are searching for that complementary self who will make us whole. As philosophy that's all very well and good, and probably as original as you want it to be. What makes this movie rock is the terrific performance of Mitchell in drag, bearing a startling resemblance to Rachel Griffiths, and singing the daylights out of a slew of very listenable songs in the glam rock tradition of David Bowie and Lou Reed, penned by fellow cast member Stephen Trask. Completing the drag race is Miriam Shor as Yitzak, Hedwig's lead guitarist and lover, in vintage Axl Rose whiskers and doing a creditable job of sensitive maleness to help stir the broth. When at the end Shor morphs back into a woman and Mitchell into a man, sort of, it bridges the genderation gap and closes the circle.
When a movie starts off with the pinwheeling fireworks this one musters, you pray for it not to lose that magical edge; regrettably, those prayers are not answered. `Hedwig' bogs down in love story sentimentality and passages that, for all of their brash naughtiness, are no better than soapsuds beneath the glitter. But momentum counts for a lot, and almost carries it over the soggy parts.
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