THE OWLS

Cricket (Deak Evgenikos) is a pretty young thing who opens the film by addressing the camera and telling of how she was invited to a pool party with former members of defunct lesbian rock band The Screech, and got into a fight when she began flirting with the wrong reveller.

This results in posters being plastered throughout the neighbourhood, announcing Cricket as a missing person.

Then we meet the former bandmates: fame-hungry Iris (Guinevere Turner) and her porn-addict ex MJ (V S Brodie), and struggling couple Lily (Lisa Gornick) and Carol (Cheryl Dunye). All are middle-aged gay women.

Lily and Carol are going through a bad patch – Lily is even contemplating leaving LA and returning home to her mother in London – and so, they invite the other two round to their apartment for an evening meal of tofu.

The night is strained by talk of the missing Cricket, and how the four of them were somehow responsible for killing and burying her. At this moment, a knock on the door jolts them.

Enter Skye (Skyler Cooper), a black woman of almost androgynous persuasion. She says she’s in the neighbourhood looking for an old friend, and then recognises the girls as being The Screech.

Skye sticks around and starts working in Lily and Carol’s garden, gradually getting closer to the pair of them. "There’s time", she tells the screen, intimating thoughts of revenge.

It is indeed soon revealed, via bizarre breaks from character and into behind-the-scenes-style documentary clips, that Skye is there to avenge the death of her friend Cricket. The only people who don’t know it at this point, are the middle-aged ex-rockers that she secretly loathes ...

Boasting a slick visual style, keen editing and an excellent soundtrack, THE OWLS is a very well-made film that flirts with thriller, lesbian drama, pseudo-documentary and even comedy. All are approached with reasonable success.

The cast are uniformly strong, offering natural, unforced performances. If the dialogue becomes a little self-conscious at times, that’s too bad: but these women do their best to rise above it, and mostly succeed.

Self-reflective, experimental in style (various filmic techniques, non-linear plotting) and just a little pretentious, the film is also brisk at 62 minutes in length and remains intriguing throughout. Turner plays a great bitch, while Dunye – who also co-writes (with Sarah Schulman) and directs – is arguably the most comfortable in front of the camera.

Made independently by the Parliament Film Collective, a group of lesbian filmmakers taking their destinies into their own hands, THE OWLS does occasionally bow to lesbian politics – but thankfully never alienates wider audiences by becoming a "film with a message".

The film is presented in 16x9 widescreen and looks very nice. Different aspect ratios (split-screens etc) are employed throughout, but this is the nature of the film and they don’t impede viewing pleasure. Colours are strong and natural, blacks hold up really well and a fair amount of detail is proffered.

English 2.0 audio is an equally reliable prospect.

There is no scene-selection menu.

Best of the extras available here is most definitely HOOTERS, the acclaimed feature-length documentary about the making of THE OWLS and lesbian cinema in general, written and directed by Anna Margarita Albelo.

Told in the form of a noirish mystery itself, it begins in monochrome with Albelo portraying narrating detective Anna, hot on the trail of a renegade bunch of lesbian filmmakers. She explains that, as lesbians become older, they fall into one of two categories: OWLs (Older, wiser lesbians) or LOFs (Lesbians over 40).

As you’ve no doubt deduced, Anna is in pursuit of the former ...

Interspersing documentary narration with flash editing and imaginative visual illustrations, alongside on-screen interviews with most of the cast and crew involved in the making of THE OWLS, HOOTERS is a remarkably honest, funny and informative documentary. Anna’s humour comes in as welcome, but never impinges upon the excellent candid prowess of her camera.

At 81 minutes in length, this is a fairly consistent ride and a good examination of low budget filmmaking by people determined to do things for themselves, on their own terms.

A fifteen-minute interview with Albelo follows, adding more to the story when you thought there’d be nothing left to say.

There’s also a nice gallery of trailers for other Peccadillo titles: MY FRIEND FROM FARO, SEA PURPLE, A MARINE STORY, THE WEDDING SONG, HERE COME THE GIRLS 3, ELENA UNDONE, LOOSE CANNONS, LIFE ABOVE ALL, THE FISH CHILD and GIGOLA.

Peccadillo have produced an excellent disc for this engaging film, and the inclusion of feature-length documentary HOOTERS will surely make this a must for fans.

Review by Stuart Willis