AKA

"AKA" is a compelling new film from the U.K. by Duncan Roy. It's making the rounds of the American queer film festivals this year and was shown three times here in New York at the New Festival.

It's one of those dramatic experiences that hangs around long after you have left the theater. Extremely well acted and directed, with a brilliant eye behind the camera, it's really the story which finally knocks you out. Is it a documentary? Actually, it feels like you are being taken along on a real anthropological expedition, but without the accompanying mess of cables and microphones and improvised scenes. The director hints at an autobiographical source for his work, but even without that suggestion the film moves in a real world of fantasy, fantasy here for both the nobs and the snobs.

Oh, I almost forgot, an (almost?) innovation incorporated in the film is the projection of three side-by-side frames of nearly simultaneous action and sound rather than the single frame and single sound track which has limited our experience of movies for about a hundred years. This eccentricity was disconcerting at the beginning of the film but while its distractions were eventually replaced by the arguable pleasures of a sort of cinematic cubism, I think the verdict may still be out on this subject.

In Britain, while the class divide is no longer relevant to most people's lives in terms of access to education or employment, there is still a great fascination with the lives of the rich. This takes the form of magazines such as 'Hello!' and 'OK!', various TV shows (particularly 'Faking it' in which a person of a certain profession/background/up-bringing is taught to behave in an opposite manner) and the enduring popularity of 'My Fair Lady' on the London stage. AKA deals with this fascination with the upper class and the way a person might assimilate into the group by deceit. Plot-wise the film is therefore quite similar to 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' and indeed also includes the homo-eroticism of that film (a symptom of privileged all male education perhaps?) as well as a certain similarity between the two leads (Matthew Leitch particularly reminds the viewer of Matt Damon when he smiles).

This is another excellent film by the recently deceased Film Four in its Film Four Lab guise (following 'Jump Tomorrow', 'My Brother Tom' & 'This Filthy Earth') which allowed for some experimentation in the cinema - which in this case means the entire film is shown in triple split screen. Creating an image even wider than 2.35:1 this does mean the viewer has to look from one third of the picture to another to entirely follow the action, but unlike Mike Figgis' 'Time Code' this is never distracting as each of the images is chosen to complement the others - for example a shot of two people talking is split between two images with the third providing a close up - and the audience does get used to this after a couple of minutes when it becomes second nature experiencing a film in this way. There doesn't seem to be a particular reason why the film is set up in this fashion at first, but it does compliment the duplicity of the lead character and the layered facades the other characters in the film hide behind (especially Benjamin). It also obviously provides a way for a 4:3 DV image to fill the cinema screen. Coming from TV backgrounds, all the actors put in reasonable performances, especially the 'adults' but Matthew Leitch in particular (who, like Peter Youngblood-Hills, comes from 'Band of Brothers') gives a commanding performance and it is no surprise that he followed this film with a Hollywood movie (David Twohy's 'Below'). While there are a few problems with the plot - the film implies that homosexuality stems from childhood abuse - an occasional problems with the quality of the sound (due to the budget) this is nevertheless a brilliant feature debut for writer director Roy, and together with his lead actor, I will be surprised if an impressive career does not follow...

For some reason, Canal+ Film2 channel is showing on my boyfriend's TV. This movie was on this morning. I didn't even know it's name, I just searched with the name of a character since I felt I should comment on this. AKA is most likely a movie not many people have seen, since it deals quite heavily with things that are often swept under the carpet, such as homosexuals and drugs.

This is not a bad movie. I can't see why so many people seem to have rated it 1/10. I gave it 7 since it's not excellent, but still worth viewing. The main thing is the tension between British middle class and aristocrats. Do you remember the episode of Faking it where a sales girl was taught to be a lady? Well this is the same thing but with a boy and no one to teach him. The main character Dean Page is a mama's boy who must leave home and soon finds himself in Paris, pretending to be Lord Alexander Gryffoyn. David and his lover boy Benjamin take Dean/Alex under their wings, unaware of who he really is. Upper class proves to be mostly a bunch of arrogant cocaine sniffers that treat outsiders like s***. Notice when Dean returns home there is a pile of dog poop on the road. The ending is quite predictable, but what's said about David is quite funny.

What a bad film AKA is. Bad acting, bad dialogue, bad lighting, and hard to see images. Why of why did this director choose to use three tiny images instead of one? Does it serve a purpose other than to annoy you? I don't care if the director is writing his own comments on this site or if in fact he isn't a very nice person in real life, this film is plain and simple

I'm a little surprised at how much vitriol is invested in some of the reviews of this film. As a film, it is tells a story that is challenging, thought provoking and fresh, while the filmmaking as a whole takes creative risks. With that said, it is also flawed in many areas, and many of the criticisms have merit. But on balance I was engaged by this film and have to applaud the filmmaker for trying to tell his story with a unique voice. Sure it's a low budget film, and that shows occasionally. But budget issues never "took me out of the movie" and the split screens - while reminiscent of Timecode - were altogether differently used - specifically using obviously different takes. That was clearly a creative decision, presumably commenting on the accuracy of memory (among other things). I'm not sure whether it entirely worked, but it was a brave attempt. I'm glad he made the film, glad I watched it and a year later, I'm still thinking about it.