The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 33

The Ottawa Citizen, Friday, December 3, 1993 D3 MOVIE REVIEWS Little Jo teSIs unique tale of Old West wwwwwi THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO Written and directed by: Maggie Greenwald Starring: Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins and Ian McKellen Playing at: The ByTowne Rating: AA fir r- SUn. By Noel Taylor Citizen movies writer LW ifA LEON: Mark Frankel with Janet Suzman as his mother ft Mn. if Leon The Pig Farmer labors to be a comedy mm FOLKLORIC: Suzy Amis as cowpoke Jo with Ian McKellen who discovers her secret For tellers of tales and moviegoers, the Western is where men are men and women are dance-hall queens. There isn't much room for any in-between which makes audiences sit up and take note when along comes Maggie Greenwald to remind us there were real women in the West, as well. And one in particular: Josephine Monaghan, who had to dress up as a cowpoke and act like one simply to survive.

Greenwald, who wrote and directed The Ballad of Little Jo, says her story was "inspired by real life," which isn't to say there actually was a Ms. Monaghan, but there were women, a few documented cases admittedly, who had to go to these extremes to make it to the other side of the corral. The movie is, after all, labelled a ballad, which as everyone knows is in the business of myth-making. This is the West from a female athough not necessarily a feminist point of view. And it is interesting in a folkloric way, although not necessarily all that revealing.

In the movie annals of cross-dressing, joined last week by Robin Williams as a nanny. Little Jo is something of a breakthrough. When the right clothes become a matter of survival, it's not a laughing matter. Up to now, the cinema has never been able to take the subject very seriously. In 1866, Josephine Monaghan heads West from her home in the East and a father who has dismissed her as a whore because she has had a child out of wedlock.

En mixed up the test tubes. Leon's real father turns out to be Brian Chadwick (Brian Glover), a Yorkshire pig farmer. His house is filled with pig plaques on the wall, pig faces on the headboard of a bed, and pigs are breeding away in the barnyard. For a Jewish youth like Leon, it's enough to turn the stomach. The way the producer-director team of Gary Sinyor and Vadim Jean see it, this single experience, including the drive to Yorkshire and the Chadwick family's valiant attempts to become Jewish for their new son, is the heavy-duty icing on their satiric cake.

There's a longish warmup mainly involving young Leon, his discomfort with his own family, and his love life with two girls, Madeleine and Lisa. One of them, Madeleine, is goyische. She loves Jewish men because "they're so intense." Lisa is Jewish, but she doesn't like this particular Jew because he's not adventurous enough. She wants a man who is a balloonist, a parachutist or, failing either, a tree surgeon. Madeleine provides enough sexual experience for half a dozen men, wrapped up in one package.

She makes stained glass windows. She is an anti-net-curtain activist, who is a bit of a voyeur on the side. Leon's father is the net-curtain king of North London. Madeleine's education of Leon takes place in restaurants, the art gallery and the bedroom. Nothing is too naughty (this is PG-rated, after all), but it comes with that healthy British disregard for the sexual conventions that dog their American counterparts.

In Yorkshire, the fun is broader. Glover is such a salt-of-the-earth character one can't help wondering why Leon feels the need to return to his domineering mother (Janet Suzman). As Leon, keeps reminding us, it has to do with the persecution complex and the guilt. i Nov. 26-28 i Total Total 0 Stut" box office earnings weeks 1.

Mrs. Doubtfire Paramount i $27.6 million $27.6 million 1 2. Addams Family Values Paramount $14.3 million $30.2 million 2 3T4 Perfect World Warner Bro. $11.2 million $11.2 million 1 4. The Three Musketeers Disney $10.3 million $33.1 million 3 5.

Carlito's Way Universal $6.3 million $25.3 million 3 6. My Life Columbia $5.7 million $19.1 million 3 7. We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story Universal $4.5 million $4.5 million 1 8. The Nightmare Before Christmas Disney $4.3 million $43.7 million 7 9. Man's Best Friend New Line $3.7 million $8 million 2 10.

The Piano Miramax $3.1 million $5.2 million 3 Last weekend's top 10 films, according to Exhibitor Relations. Estimated North American ticket sales are gathered from Friday through Sunday. Figures are based on actual receipts and projections where actual figures were pot available. route, she is befriended by a travelling salesman who proves what brutes men are by selling her to a passing soldier. But Josephine escapes and, discovering in a company store one day that she can't buy a new dress to cover her mistreatment, she opts for a rough shirt, some pants and a wide brimmed hat to shadow her femininity.

For authenticity's sake, she gives herself a razor scar on the side of her face. "It's against the law to dress improper to your sex," the female storekeeper reminds her, but Josephine takes the plunge anyway and becomes Jo. In Ruby City, a Gold Rush mining town, she enters a world of men without women, where "dudes" are threatened with extinction and life, as a man, is sweeter. But not much. together '7F9- 7 At i NEWCOMER: Pascale Delafouge Jones as Elenya that are beyond her personal experience.

She is Elenya and Elenya is hers and a telling movie with which to conclude such an eclectic FT in relationships hold film LEON THE PIG FARMER Directed by: Gary Sinyor and Vadim Jean Starring: Mark Frankel, Janet Suzman and Brian Glover. Playing at: The ByTowne Rating: PG By Noel Taylor Citizen movies writer The continuing giggle through Leon The Pig Farmer is that Leon is Jewish. In the course of his brief career, Leon (Mark Frankel) has been a disenchanted estate agent, a deliv-eryman for his mother's kosher catering business, and now, by extremely devious routing, a pig farmer. How he gets there and the feeling of deep guilt he feels about it, and about being Jewish in general, is what keeps the "oink" in this rambling, slightly Rabelaisian, vaguely Pythonesque, absurdist comedy. If that sounds as though it might be hilarious, don't get carried away.

It is, in spasms, but sometimes it labors. Leon is amusing in a socially incorrect way, but it seems somewhat self-conscious about it, as though a Jewish comedy from Britain ought to be more discreet about satirizing the attitudes it's making fun of. Leon has enough guilt in his life mostly associated with family repressiveness not to need the ultimate predicament that is inflicted on this nice Jewish boy. One day while delivering pies to the local sex clinic for his mother, he submits out of curiosity to a sperm count test. When he returns two weeks later he's reassured that he's potent enough, but there is another problem in his life.

His father and mother, they tell him, had their other three sons by artificial insemination. When they got to Leon, however, someone ELENYA Written and directed by Steve Gough European Community Film Festival Museum of Civilization Theatre Saturday at 7 p.m. By Noel Taylor Citizen movies writer Elcnya, the United Kingdom's entry in this year's European Community Film Festival, also happens to be a co-production with Germany. Movie ratings from critics Excellent A Good Average Poor 9 Awful Addams Family Values A Perfect World Carlito's Way Farewell My Concubine Fearless Flesh and Bone Josh and S.A.M. Look Who's Talking Now The Lotus Eaters Mrs.

Doubtfire My Life The Nutcracker The Piano Remains of the Day Robocop 3 Short Cuts The Three Musketeers We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story IT I i.nin i IS I a better place just by being there. Jo's affair with Tinman is an idyllic interlude, intimate and pure, in which each recognizes the outcast in the other and is unfettered by the acknowledgment: "If they knew, they'd kill Why can't we just live as we are?" For Suzy Amis, as Jo, the demands of androgyny are a challenge for a figure so slight in a world of hardened men. That they can't envision a woman breaking the rules is all that saves her. Amis lowers her voice, scowls a lot and bites back when crossed, but our acceptance of her altered state comes hard. Greenwald's strength as director lies in her enthusiasm for the spirit of the Western and the attention she lavishes on its daily life.

Revisionist it may be, but it's long overdue. CAST MEMBERS: Patrick Dempsey and Olivia D'Abo ly become repetitive and an embarrassment to watch. In and out of Billy's hotel room drift a motley crew of characters, all wanting to rip him off in exchange for silence. Only a hooker, played by Lisa (Cosby Show) Bonet, is willing to settle for her usual fee. The characters a drug dealer, a hotel receptionist, a transvestite, a pizza delivery man and a shop-at-home representative are potentially interesting but, again, badly scripted and ultimately cliched.

The movie, written and directed by relatively untested Englishman Nick Mead, has some good ideas that in other hands might have worked better. Mead seems to have wanted to make a subtle, understated movie, but hasn't quite dared. Bank Robber is a film without an identity. The movie's one redeeming feature is in its photography. The camera work is often quite good.

Agatha Christie novels and games of chess with himself are set aside for the racier pleasures of the motorcycle a more conventional symbol of youth and rebellion that he takes up as though he were driving a Dodge. Ana Sofia is a most available lover, disconcertingly so for a man who has admitted, "I'll be like a father to you." Ines Medeiros sparkles in the young girl's role, twinkles even, blind to the parent-daughter image and backed by a family of apparently fastidious people who embrace the newcomer. Jos6 Fonseca Costa, who directed, does so with a heavy hand on his heart and a rueful gaze. For the menopausal, male or female, it's a glum business without a hint of the wry amusement that ought to alleviate the pain. Still, that's life and in The Homs of Chronos, death too.

British actor Ian McKellen, mysteriously cast as a company assay-er, discovers her secret and changes in an instant from a sympathetic friend to an archetypical male aggressor. It's what the West does to a man. Badger (Bo Hopkins), who becomes her neighbor, entrusts her with the role of sheep herder, a hermit-like existence which becomes her salvation. There are intrusions, some unexpected, such as the Chinese railway worker called Tinman (David Chung) she rescues from a lynching and takes home to be her cook and, when he discovers her real identity, her lover. And there's Badger, who keeps dropping by but goes no further because he's got a wife, Carrie Snodgress, cast in the mould of the kind of woman who made the West Bank Robber lacks identity BANK ROBBER Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Forest Whitaker, Judge Reinhold, Lisa Bonet, Olivia D'Abo Written and directed by: Nick Mead Playing at: Capitol Square Rated: By Chris Cobb Citizen staff writer Inside Bank Robber there may be a surreal, European art movie trying to get out.

Or maybe not What you see on the screen is a confused mess of scenes that add up to nothing. This is a bad movie. A very bad movie. Bank Robber is billed as a comedy of crime and passion, but its at-tempts at humor rarely work. Worse, it jerks the viewer from light-hearted interludes into scenes of violence and suggestions of sadomasochistic sex.

The pieces just don't fit together. Billy, played by (a younger) Bruce Springsteen lookalike Patrick Dempsey, is the bank robber. Billy robs to fulfil his dreams, and to satisfy the material lust of his girlfriend, but he doesn't do very well at it. Half the action takes place in a hotel room Heartbreak Hotel on Lonely Street where Billy is holed up after a bank robbery. A bank camera caught him in the act and his face is all over the news.

The movie is essentially three revolving scenes and could easily be a theatrical production. There's the hotel room, the bedroom of Billy's faithless lover, and a police patrol car. The police officers, played by Judge Reinhold and Forest Whitaker (Whitaker was the captured British soldier in Crying Game), are anti-police stereotypes more social workers than police officers. The two banter in liberal platitudes in what promises to become an original, funny subplot. Unfortunately, the scenes are so appallingly written that they quick- October romance.

The film is Portugal's entry in this year's European Community Film Festival at the Museum of Civilization Theatre. This notion that age, even middle age, has its limitations alongside youth has generally worked better as a comedy. What's funnier than those embarrassing steps the fortysomething takes to minimize the generation gap, fighting what in North America is called the male menopause? The Portuguese apparently do not find it so amusing. Alexandre, as we are constantly reminded, doesn't look 48, though as played by Carlos Vereza, he tends to act it. He's a sober, rather melancholy figure who agrees with his pal, the equally obsessive poet-professor, that "it's a big bore, the end of life." And they're only in their 40s! Alexandre soldiers on in the trenches of doomed passion.

Its principals are a young Welsh girl, engagingly played by 12-year-old newcomer Pascale Delafouge Jones, and Franz, the German airman she finds one morning in a patch of woods by her home. It's 1940 and he has dropped his bombs in the countryside before crashing and is hanging in a tree by a parachute. He is both intruder and outcast which makes him instantly sim-patico with Elenya, born of an Italian mother and living in an isolat- and reviewers across Canada i Southam News Graphics yi lis I ill it mmm TTi 1T1 A A ma A A BAT A pr AAA Aits ai mmm 1 Til cf gf Cf fif cf 1 A A A A A abh mmm Til 11 gf A tut in 1 A A A TTT OMB tif 9 A A A iir ii TTi IT MM IT! ed Welsh community where other children tease and abuse her for being different. The premise is simple: Between the airman and the child, though neither speaks the other's language, there is understanding of the most primal sort and unity in the common cause of survival. At about 80 minutes, Elenya is a comparatively short film, but manages to convey much about compassion and communication.

Though this is wartime, for the child there is a deeper, more bitter, conflict at home. Her father has joined the army, leaving Elenya with her father's sister, Aunt Maggie (Sue Jones Da-vies), a woman resentful of the love between father and daughter. Director Steve Gough admits to being preoccupied with people who can't communicate and, in this film, he has explored the gamut. Maggie has the fierceness of the perpetually misunderstood, and there are few words between her and the child. There are even fewer between Elenya and her airman.

But the difference between the two relationships in her life is the glue that holds this compelling film together. When she finds him, she tells the uncomprehending airman, "I've got to keep you here until the war is over." She buries his equipment and his clothes and, pragmatically for a child, the private papers he carries with him. The parachute she keeps to shelter him from the cold Welsh rain, though its whiteness in the dark woods might seem a careless giveaway. To preserve him, she tells herself later, "I became a liar and a thief." She becomes a nurse as well, bathing his wounds, and an ingenious provider of clothing and food. The completeness of her deception in the small community where she lives stretches credibility, but Gough 's purpose is pure enough to overcome such misgivings.

Pascale Jones is a find, a young actress who uses her whole body and her face to convey emotions May-October romance serious business in movie THE HORNS OF CHRONOS (subtitled) Directed by Jose Fonseca Costa European Community Film Festival Museum of Civilization Theatre Tonight at 7 p.m. By Noel Taylor Citizen movies writer Alexandre is 48, a crime writer who earns more from his work as a translator. Ana Sofia is 17. a ballet student whose window faces his. Alexandre is alone: so is she.

He has a wife, Margarida. who has walked out on him to live with a wealthy American. Ana Sofia has never had an affair now she is infatuated with the older man. Os Cornat de Cronos (T)ie Hants of Chronos), an oblique reference one presumes to the passing of time, is about the impossibility of the May-.