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[REVIEWS
> HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH]
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| 07/31/2001 |
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That
Little Inch Should Be Telling You Something... As flashy as
Hedwig's wardrobe, as charming and subtly dark as a Brothers'
Grimm fable and as campy as the best of John Waters' oeuvre,
the film seems destined to be a cult classic. Don't let size
fool you, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" looms large on the screen
as a first-rate cinematic experience. |
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Reviewed by D. Dammet
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| A comedy of tragic proportions and a tragedy
with comic dimension, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is a
Glam Rock Drag Queen Musical Odyssey like none other.
Perhaps that's because this is the only Glam Rock Drag
Queen Musical Odyssey ever put to film, and the result
is pure camp entertainment with an edge. |
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| There will invariably be comparisons to "Rocky Horror
Picture Show" since that, too, was a musical and for the
presence of the draggy character of Frankenfurter, but
the similarities end there. Comparisons to Glam period
piece "Velvet Goldmine" may arise due to the same genre
of music that throbs and buzzes in both films. (The sound
is early 70's Glam proto-punk in the style of Ziggy Stardust-era
David Bowie and Transformer-era Lou Reed.) But these comparisons
don't quite make it. |
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| "Rocky Horror" seems like camp-for-camp's-sake and
"Velvet Goldmine" is a valentine to a bygone era of wantonness,
flamboyance and cocaine. At its core, "Hedwig" is about
love and the perseverance to seek wholeness through love
ña search for adulation and a soulmate, only to end in
separation, or, more specifically, severance. |
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| John Cameron Mitchell wrote, directed and stars in
a role adapted from his play as the brash and bawdy Hedwig,
who leads her band of East European immigrants The Angry
Inch on a tour of Bilgewater Inn Seafood Restaurants from
Kansas to New York. These appearances coincide in location
with those of arena rock God Tommy Gnosis, and there is
more of a connection between Tommy and Hedwig than venue
proximity. |
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| The story unfolds primarily through songs along the
tour that describe Hedwig's life from her childhood in
East Berlin as Hansel Schmidt through her sexual awakening
at the hands of an American GI stationed along the Berlin
Wall in East Germany. Hansel undergoes a less that successful
sex-change operation in order to marry the GI and flee
to America. Thus Hansel becomes Hedwig, and not long after
her relocation to small town Middle America, the GI leaves
her for a younger boy. Abandoned in a trailer park, Hedwig
dons a blonde, French flip wig a la Farrah Fawcett and
pursues her dream to become a rock star. |
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| Before leaving the trailer park, Hedwig finds a lover
and potential soulmate in the form of a classic rock-loving,
born-again innocent named Tommy, a believer in the music
of Peter Frampton and Kansas, who she takes under her
wing as a protÈgÈ. After an education in the music of
Bowie, Reed and Iggy Pop, Hedwig transforms Tommy into
Tommy Gnosis, who rockets to superstardom after stealing
Hedwig's songs. Visually kaleidoscopic, with in-your-face
cinematography and surrealistic production design portraying
everything from drab East Berlin to the dead-end idyll
of a mid-western trailer park in addition to naive animation
sequences interspersed in the live action, "Hedwig" is
eye candy. The music written by Steven Trask captures
the sweep and the snarl of early 70's Glam rock so perfectly
that you may find yourself wanting spin a little of Bowie's
Alladin Sane or maybe some T. Rex when you return home
from the theater. |
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As flashy as Hedwig's wardrobe, as charming and subtly
dark as a Brothers' Grimm fable and as campy as the best
of John Waters' oeuvre, the film seems destined to be
a cult classic. Don't let size fool you, "Hedwig and the
Angry Inch" looms large on the screen as a first-rate
cinematic experience. .jpg) |
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