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Luster
Directed by Everett Lewis
Starring Justin Herwick, Shane Powers, B. Wyatt, Sean Thibodeau, Willie Garson, Pamela Gidley.
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The independent contemporary gay film scene has a range of smart, inventive bright-spots-- Noam Gornick's 2001 Hey, Happy, C. Jay Cox's 2003 Latter Days-- as well as its share of clunkers-- fill in your own list of personal worsts. But what it does not have are writer/directors who are building a sustained body of work that grows with them. The great thing about the Hollywood studio-system, or the French New Wave, was that it sustained directors over time so that their work could mature, and change in surprising ways. It's a lot harder in the independent-film world of today.

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Alright, Gus van Sant and Gregg Araki have managed to produce a sizable, impressive body of work, but they've moved out of small independent circles. Christopher Munch has made great films, beginning with The Hours and Times in 1991, and more recently Harry + Max in 2004. But few others have been able to sustain a career that develops and ripens over time.

That is why Everett Lewis is so impressive. His first film was the 1991 The Natural History of Parking Lots, and then he made the An Ambush of Ghosts in 1993. Skin and Bone was released in 1996. His themes moved from dysfunctional biological families to dysfunctional chosen families. Each of these films was dark and brooding, with Skin and Bone being downright depressing in its relentless depiction of squalid LA hustler life. (Unfortunately none of these films are available on VHS or DVD.)

In the last three years, Lewis has released two new films-- which are, luckily available on DVD from TLA-- both of which are departures from his earlier work and, each in a different way, is quite interesting.

Luster, released in 2002, is a comedy with somber undertones, or maybe a drama with comic overtones. It charts the complicated lives of a group of LA artists and faux-punks, both straight and gay, as they try to arrange themselves in satisfying, workable relationships. Jackson (Justin Herwick) is at the center of the group and is a poet, who works part-time in an alternative music store run by Sam (Shane Powers). Nothing much happens-- Jackson falls in love with his wild-child cousin Jed (B. Wyatt), but is loved by the more straightlaced Derek (Sean Thibodeau), and in the meantime is writing lyrics for closeted SM rock musician, Sonny Spike (Willie Garson), who has an ongoing violent relationship with Billy (Jonah Blechman), who ends up fucking cousin Jed after Jed has had a quick fling with lesbian Alyssa (Pamela Gidley). Confused? Still, the series of romantic couplings and physical copulatings weaves a dramatic tension that's a cross between La Ronde and "Dawson's Creek."

What's so emotionally persuasive about Luster is what we like about Jane Austin novels-- it presents characters who, even in their extremes, are emblematic of recognizable human traits. It's true that none of them are particularly likeable-- the same can be said of the characters in Pride and Prejudice-- but we can empathize with their needs and foibles. There's an elegant symmetry in Luster that appeals to our sense of aesthetics as well as romance. Luster feels a little lightweight next to the drama of The Natural History of Parking Lots and Skin and Bone, but that's more the cultural difference of genre than the emotional weight of the film.

FAQs, which has just been released on DVD, ostensibly deals with heavier material-- gay bashing, the institutionalized hatred of queers by straight society, the exploitation of young men by an uncaring pornography industry. But as it unfolds, it's clear that Lewis has other interests in mind. India (Joe Lia) is a young man from Colorado who has come to West Hollywood to be gay but runs into some trouble with a sleazy pornographer who takes advantage of him, and then meets Destiny (Allan Louis) a fabulous drag queen who adopts India into her own "family," which includes Lester (Minerva Vier), a butch young dyke. Destiny and India thwart a couple of gay bashers (like all fabulous drag queens, Destiny caries a gun at all times) and then India meets Spencer (Lance Lee Davis), another hustler ,and they fall in love and India brings happiness to everyone-- even the homophobic attackers. The theme of FAQs is that gay love can conquer all, and even revenge withers before its warmth.

FAQs often feels schematic and obvious-- Destiny is a parody of the nurturing drag-queen, characters speak in pop-psychology clichés, the good people are all good, the bad all bad. But Lewis's genre here is not your standard gay drama film plot, but rather a parody of it-- a clever use of conventions and gimmicks that resonate beyond their original uses.

Both Luster and FAQs are helped immeasurably by Lewis's fine cinematography-- evident in the earlier films as well-- and natural acting of a caliber unusual in independent films. Neither movies are great, but both are consistently interesting and enjoyable. They're at least a partial fulfillment of the promise of Lewis's earlier work. Best of all, they make us eager to see what he'll do next.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com