Friday, September 28, 2001

Movie review
Poetic ‘Hedwig’ deserves mainstream showings
Associated Press

Forget cult hit. “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” is such a crowd-pleaser it deserves to play multiplexes in every town that boasts one of the movie’s fictitious Bilgewater’s restaurant franchises. And there should be a Bilgewater’s everywhere.

The boisterous musical’s subject matter — an East German transsexual stalking love and stardom in a retro glam-rock band — may relegate the film to arthouses.

Playful and poetic, raunchy and reflective, “Hedwig” is a delight from start to finish.

The film takes the campy spirit of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and appends great heart and smarts, creating a bold, original film.

John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask adapted “Hedwig” from their off-Broadway hit. Mitchell wrote the screenplay, directs and stars as Hedwig, the role he created in the stage show, while Trask provides music and lyrics and appears as a member of Hedwig’s band, the Angry Inch.

The story is spun as Hedwig shares her life story while the band plays endless gigs crowded around the buffet sneeze shields at Bilgewater’s restaurants.

Born a boy named Hansel, Hedwig escaped East Berlin by undergoing sex-change surgery and marrying a U.S. serviceman “Sugar Daddy.” But the doctor botched the operation, leaving Hedwig with a stump of flesh — an angry inch — that puts her in limbo between man and woman.

Abandoned by her husband in a Kansas trailer park — ironically at the moment the TV airs live footage of the Berlin Wall falling — Hedwig dons a succession of flashy blond wigs and sets out to rock in the style of childhood heroes David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

She finds a seeming soul mate in Tommy (Michael Pitt), a Bible-thumping boy Hedwig teaches to rock. When Tommy swipes her songs and transforms himself into a rock icon, Hedwig begins a shadow tour of America in Tommy’s wake.

Through song and reminiscence, Hedwig relates the sadly comic frustrations of her very confused life.

One of the film’s signature songs, “The Origin of Love” offers an intriguing variation of the story of Adam’s rib—that two men, two women or one of each once shared a body with two faces and two sets of arms and legs. Angry gods tore them asunder, and people have been trying to put themselves back together ever since, through love and sex.

Trask’s songs are intelligent and entertaining, ranging from hard-rocking punk to ruminative balladry.

The performances are first-rate, with fine support from Pitt, Miriam Shor as Hedwig’s mistreated lover, Andrea Martin as band manager and Maurice Dean Wint as Hedwig’s Sugar Daddy.

Mitchell carries the show, though. His Hedwig is a dynamo of musical bravado and self-denigrating patter on stage and a wistful lost child in private. “Hedwig” is now playing at the Angelika Film Center.