Femme Fatale

This affectionately observed, nimbly edited (and perhaps a mite overly
reverent) documentary, framed by a clever pseudo-newsreel format, traces
Busch’s “strange sort of career as a leading lady” from an “actress-crazy”
troubled kid obsessed with opera and vintage movies to East Village fringe
theater impresario to Broadway playwright (”The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife”),
novelist (”Whores of Lost Atlantis”) and movie star. Busch’s “Die, Mommie,
Die!” opened the 2003 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
at the Castro Theatre; his next film, “A Very Serious Person,” written,
directed and starring Busch as — gasp! a male nurse — premieres at the
Tribeca Film Festival on April 28.

A San Francisco favorite, the conventionally uncastable Busch became a
playwright by necessity to accommodate his romantic sensibility and uniquely
outsize talents and, in the best parts of “Lady in Question,” we watch him
develop his solo work at San Francisco’s Theatre Rhinoceros through his rise
during the mid-’80s (concurrent with the crux of the AIDS crisis, which
informed his work and affected his Lost-in-Limbo troupe members) through the
five-year run of his breakthrough show, “Vampire Lesbians.” More than just your
garden-variety gender-blending genius, Busch in his heyday was a master of
pastiche, hybridizing the almost-forgotten genres such as historical pageants,
anti-Nazi melodramas and ’60s beach movies.

Though the film feels too long by about 30 minutes, veering into Lifetime
network melodrama and padded with celebrity accolades (Kathleen Turner, Paul
Rudnick, B.D. Wong and an embarrassing encounter with Rosie O’Donnell), it
thrills nonetheless with priceless footage of mid-’80s stage performances and
rare offstage glimpses of the gentle and self-effacing Busch, who onstage
bursts into glorious flame as a draggin’ lady for the ages.

– Advisory: Contains gender humor and brief nudity.

– Joe Brown

‘Shakespeare Behind Bars’

Documentary. Written and directed
by Hank Rogerson. (Not rated. 93 minutes. At the Lumiere and Shattuck Cinemas
in Berkeley.)

Standing in what looks like an open field, a burly man with a shaved
head earnestly delivers a speech from “The Tempest” (”Our revels now are ended
…”). A moment later, we spot what is unmistakably a guard’s tower in the
background. The setting is a maximum-security prison in Kentucky, and the actor
rehearsing his lines is an inmate.

He’s among a group of prisoners at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex
who, for therapeutic and educational purposes, annually stage a Shakespeare
play. They’re serving hard time, but they’re lucky enough to be in a facility
where the man in charge “hates prisons” — those that exist only for
punishment. The warden believes that part of his mission is educational.

These inmates actually are doubly fortunate because they are also in the
good hands of Curt Tofteland, artistic director of the Kentucky Shakespeare
Festival, who volunteers his services as facilitator.

This affecting documentary focuses on their 2004 production, a play whose
themes of forgiveness and redemption certainly ought to have some resonance for
the inmates. And the men — Hal, Red, Big G and the others — are amazed at
how accurately “The Tempest” speaks to their situation.

Filmmaker Hank Rogerson’s strategy is to allow us to get to know the men
before we learn about their crimes, which are some of the worst imaginable:
multiple murder, serial child molesting, cop killing and the like. The men,
often in tears, tell their stories, by turns appalling and heartbreaking.

Inevitably, we wonder about the authenticity of their remorse. Are the
men, several of whom are coming up for parole, simply trying to con the
authorities (to say nothing of the filmmaker and the viewers)? Rogerson
declines to force a conclusion: The inmates present their stories, placing the
audience exactly in the position of a parole board, pondering how much the men
have really changed.

Most viewers will probably conclude that at least some of the inmates are
sincere. The film makes the case — one that always needs making — that,
despite what they’ve done, these men retain some shred of humanity.

In addition to lots of rehearsal snippets, Rogerson includes scenes of the
actual production, which is spirited and moving. As Tofteland points out, when
“The Tempest” was originally staged, actors were looked down upon as the dregs
of society. He thinks Shakespeare would approve of this production.

– Advisory: The film includes disturbing descriptions of real-life
crimes.

– Walter Addiego

‘Crossing Arizona’

Documentary. Directed and produced
by Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo. (Not rated. 96 minutes. At the Roxie.)

Filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo probably had no idea that when
they were making “Crossing Arizona,” the issue of immigration reform, already a
hot-button topic, would fill urban streets with tens of thousands of protesters
and create chaos in Congress, but in their good luck, that is exactly the
situation as their movie opens at the Roxie today in its theatrical premiere.

The film, which premiered at Sundance in January, examines the immigration
problem along the Arizona-Sonora border. An estimated 3,000 Mexicans have died
there trying to cross into the United States since 1993, when government policy
mandated fencing off the border near urban areas, primarily San Diego and El
Paso, Texas, where illegal immigration had become problematic. Undocumented
immigrants are still trying to cross the border, into the more dangerous
Arizona desert, where water, food and medical assistance are as scarce as the
Border Patrol.

Mathew and DeVivo try to give all sides of this complex story. They talk
to activists who are both for and against illegal immigration, human rights
groups that provide water at checkpoints, law enforcement officials,
politicians, local ranchers, “coyotes” who traffic illegal immigrants across
the border and illegal immigrants themselves.

As Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, Ariz., points out, far-left liberals,
ultra-right-wing conservatives and everyone in between seem to agree that the
current U.S. policy is not working. It’s what to do about it that is in
contention.

No hour-and-a-half documentary can do much more than scratch the surface
of the issue, but Mathew and DeVivo provide an excellent primer and some human
faces on the front lines. Any solution will have to combine delicate diplomacy,
national security issues, economic concerns of both American employers and
workers, and a better, more sensible system of acquiring citizenship.

“Crossing Arizona” left me with some indelible images: The body of a
28-year-old pregnant woman in the desert, the exchange between a retired nurse
and an activist, and the rancher who said he has endured more than $1 million
in cattle losses and damage because of illegal immigrants crossing his land.

Most haunting was the meeting of an Indian providing water at various
checkpoints on a reservation and an undocumented immigrant who had paid about
$1,300 to be smuggled across the border so he could work to get enough money
for his wife’s surgery. The American lends a sympathetic ear and provides some
water and food but tells the Mexican he will not survive unless he turns
himself in to the Border Patrol.

The look on the Mexican’s face says it all.

Screenings will have bilingual subtitles. The filmmakers will be at
screenings today through Sunday.

– Advisory: Some graphic images of dead bodies.

– G. Allen Johnson

‘La Mujer de Mi Hermano’

Drama. Starring Bárbara Mori, Christian Meier and Manolo Cardona. Directed by
Ricardo de Montreuil. (R. 89 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Repressed desire! A sultry soap-opera star! Incest! Gay
politics! “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” has it all. Now if it only had a decent
plot.

Ricardo de Montreuil’s artfully filmed feature is a soap opera with
pretensions to art, but a soap opera nonetheless. The plot: Ten years of
marriage to the wealthy but sterile Ignacio (Christian Meier) — a guy so
repressed he wears boxers while skinny-dipping — have left Zoe (Bárbara
Mori) sexually starved and bored out of her mind. Enter Ignacio’s freeloading,
freethinking artist brother, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), who wants to paint Zoe’s
portrait and show her his etchings, so to speak.

The inevitable happens. The two become lovers, plunging Zoe into a
conundrum as old as melodrama: Should Zoe choose security over passion? Honor
before fulfillment? Some fresh revelations further complicate matters as Zoe,
suffering beautifully and showing a lot of leg, learns more about her husband
than she cared to know. Soon every member of the incestuous love triangle must
make big decisions. Whatever shall they do?

Viewers will probably guess most of the answers a third of the way through
and struggle to maintain interest for the remainder. More intriguing are the
questions that remain unanswered, such as how Zoe’s embalmed marriage lasted a
decade, or how anyone could manage a happily-ever-after scenario considering
some of the narrative’s tawdrier details. “La Mujer” tackles none of these. Not
surprising, considering the characters are the stuff templates are made of,
from Zoe the suffering nymph to Gonzalo the irresponsible rebel to Ignacio the
uptight husband with a secret. They yield predictably shallow results.

Signs that de Montreuil can do better can be found in the movie’s opening
sequence: a muted, microcosmic landscape of dead leaves and dying insects,
drifting like emotional flotsam in Ignacio’s swimming pool. If only the
director had followed through on these promising metaphors. Maybe next time. As
is, “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” is just titillation — and not terribly
interesting titillation at that.

– Advisory: Sexual situations and language.

– Neva Chonin