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The similarities between porn and musicals have been frequently noted. In both, character and plot take a back seat to a series of set pieces designed for visceral, immediate pleasure. Daisy von Scherler Mayer's movie takes this confluence a step further, bringing cross-cultural desire together with the sheer delight of Grease. Dance instructor Jimi Mistry comes to New York to become a star. The first acting job he lands is a porn movie, where he meets the self-assured Heather Graham. Silly plot turns and energetic Bollywood-style song-and-dance numbers lead him into the arms of a rich girl (Marisa Tomei), seeking spiritual guidance. With Tomei's financial support and Graham's lessons in healthy sexual performance, Mistry becomes the Guru of Sex, a star as beloved and desired as Deepak Chopra. Lively, smart, and executive produced by Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen), the film challenges typical trajectories of cultural influence by reversing and celebrating them. It's also so completely charmed by itself that it's impossible to resist.--Cindy Fuchs (Ritz East; Ritz 16)

Audrey Tatou takes another whack at l'amour fou in Laetitia Colombani's convoluted poison valentine. Angelique (Tatou) is an art student who's carrying on a passionate affair with a married doctor (Samuel Le Bihan) -- or maybe not. Confined to her point of view, the film's first half suggests that the relationship might be all in her head; shot from his, the second half proves it is. No surprise spoiled there -- He Loves Me belongs to, or at least borders on, a by-now familiar form: the POV movie. (Think Memento; think Sliding Doors.) Such movies purportedly confine what we see to what a particular character sees, while always hinting at discrepancies that might reveal the truth. Trouble is, the format -- never an unduly fascinating one to begin with -- has been used so much that it takes a real whopper of a surprise, and real cleverness in concealing it, to make the endless jiggery-pokery worth waiting through, and He Loves Me has neither. Clever without being smart, it's no more than a mirage.--Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

His Secret Life opens with a husband and wife flirting with each other by pretending to never have met; Massimo (Andrea Renzi) trails Antonia (Margherita Buy) through an art gallery, pitching unsuccessful woo until she drops her guard and starts telling him about her inattentive husband. But while they play at being strangers here, it's not long before Antonia finds out that she knows far less about her husband's life than she ever suspected. After Massimo is mowed down crossing the street (a chuckle-inducing use of bad digital effects that looks like an action figure getting smacked by a wayward slot car), Antonia finds a painting with a romantic inscription on the back in his office, which betrays the shocking knowledge that her husband had been having an affair for seven years. The surprises don't end there -- she tracks down the painting's sender and finds not a bottle-blond tootsie but a trim, attractive young man: Michele (Stefano Accorsi). That His Secret Life develops beyond this hoary, 50s-melodrama premise is both to director/co-writer Ferzan Ozpetek's credit and his detriment, the latter for having started in such over-fished waters. As Antonia finds her way into Michele's circle of friends, the film takes on Almadóvarian contours, but Ozpetek's hands are too soap-slippery to handle the delicate details.--S.A (Ritz at the Bourse).

Max Raab, whose film career has brought him in contact with such luminaries as Stanley Kubrick, Nicolas Roeg and Agnès Varda, makes a late-in-life directorial debut with this celebratory documentary on that most sexually ambiguous of Philadelphia institutions, the Mummers parade. Clearly intended for a local audience -- Ed Rendell appears onscreen, in makeup, without being identified --Strut! skips the history and gets down to business, going inside the brigades and string bands as they get ready for the big show. No matter how many times you've frozen your hungover ass off on Broad Street on New Year's Day, you've still got a few things to learn about the Mummers, so consider Strut! a crash course. --S.A.(Roxy)

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February 13, 2003
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