Impostors

A polysexual vaudeville playing promiscuously with melodramatic intrigue, camp and intellectual gamesmanship, IMPOSTORS remains as unclassifiable as it was in 1979. Its slippery "plot" centers on the romance between besotted Peter (Peter Evans) and elusive Tina (Ellen McElduff). She's a faithless bisexual and beauteous onstage assistant to lookalike magicians Mikey (Michael Burg) and Chuckie (stage legend Charles Ludlum of Manhattan's Ridiculous Theatrical Company) who, for their part, inhabit opposite poles of the Kinsey Scale. They've also purportedly left behind a swath of murder victims "as wide as the Nile," mysterious bits of Egyptology, including clips from THE MUMMY, also figures here. The hilariously argumentative "twins" are jokers in a full conceptual deck that plays jealousy and possessiveness against the remote hope of even temporary contentment (and, in a typical verbal "touche," one character here snipes, "I love idealists. They're so out of it.") Theatrical even as it violates the sanctity of the "fourth wall," sending up the romantic histrionics of another cinematic era while playing with very Me Decade morals (and media), IMPOSTORS recalls the more playful indulgences of Raúl Ruiz, Alain Resnais and Jacques Rivette (and even Josef von Sternberg), albeit though a distorting gallery-funhouse mirror specific to no-budget filmmaking in late 1970s New York City. - Dennis Harvey