A Beauty

Rating: Null/10 (27 August 2001)

This movie is nothing short of an epic existential poem, beginning with a tragi-hopeful Hedwigian mythology of separation and return and culminating by debunking the very myth it sets up. Hedwig exits, a naked boy, the essentially solitary human being. The film is also a meditation on Rock'n'Roll's primarily unacknowledged debt to transsexual theory. It's a demanding work. Repeated watchings yield and yield. John Cameron Mitchell's performance is exquisite, and his writing--as well as Trax's--commanding.