Imperfect

Andy Warhol made a whole movie career out of filming people goofing around on camera. Back in the '60s, when everything was shot on film (and consequently was expensive), wasting time - in films like CAMP, etc. - was itself an act of provocation. These campy, improvisational aesthetics filtered down into the rambling, attention-seeking monologues of John Waters, and finally got spat out in East LA in the video-shot '80's oddities of Harry Gamboa, Jr.

Apparently filmed and edited in a mere 48 hours, works like IMPERFECTO (Gamboa's first) have a loose, improvisational energy to the stories and performances that's redolent of Waters. IMPERFECTO starts with a man (Humberto Sandoval) in an insane asylum getting released by his disinterested doctor and nurse, who figure he's about as cured as he'll ever be. Copping a dapper new wardrobe out of a paper bag, Sandoval wanders around downtown Los Angeles, incessantly yelling "THE TRUUUTH" at the top of his lungs and bungling into various parties and events, where the characters treat him with everything from bemusement to distain.

The film's most compelling moments are these street shots, and not only because they function as fascinating, inadvertent (or maybe not-so-inadvertent) time capsules. There's a clear streak of anarchist social provocation here, similar to the famous scenes of Divine sashaying down the sidewalk in FEMALE TROUBLE or PINK FLAMINGOS, where the most compelling element becomes watching random passers-by reacting to Sandoval's behavior. Let it be said Sandoval does make for a compelling presence - he throws himself into the role with gusto, and it's a pity the film doesn't really give him more to work with than running around yelling like an idiot. It'd be nice to see what he could achieve with actual scripted comedy.

Gamboa has gone on to a full-fledged career and position as an instructor at CalArts, so there's a certain revisionist lens that will be applied to any piece like this, which is, at its core, merely a record of a bunch of young people fooling around in the early '80s, the same type of thing filling innumerable families' shelves of home movies. It's not bad, per se (even if all the yelling does get annoying), but it doesn't seem like it has all that much to say, either. Most of what you can wring out of it is extra-textual: the way it captures the Reaganite urban blight of early '80s downtown LA, or satirizes the '80s neo-conservative drive to push mental health problems out of treatment facilities and onto the streets (with predictably deleterious results). All of these are, ultimately, truths, but at the same time, none seem particularly born out of the film's desire for revelation. Mostly, it's just a bunch of yelling.