REVIEWS: BRITISH ROMP, AMERICAN TRAGEDY : It Sings, It Dances With ‘Absolute’ 1958 Certainty

Suddenly we have a full-blown musical in our midst, the English “Absolute Beginners” (at the Cinerama Dome) made loosely from Colin MacInnes’ cult novel. It’s a teeming, cheerful, hell’s-own energetic extravaganza about fab London--1958, told with a jolt of 1980s energy with the techniques of rock videos.

It has most of the musical’s endearingly silly conventions: a story that would comfortably fit in a contact lens--a boy and girl who meet, part, get together again. With the exception of David Bowie, Sade, the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Anita Morris and James Fox, it has a cast of talented un- or little-knowns, except to students of the period. (It has, for example, Mandy Rice-Davies, and if you have to ask who she is, then the ‘50s, and musicals on a big screen, will probably be a nice surprise too.)

At the end, as the action turns shocking and ugly, “Absolute Beginners” seems to be about something. It isn’t really. It’s about style and cool and appreciation, and that’s not to be sniffed at. But “My Beautiful Laundrette,” unpretentious as it is, has a lot more to say, about racial tension and everything else, than “Absolute Beginners.” No biggie. It still leaves a lot to be enjoyed in a movie whose wit and visual blandishments can’t possibly be assimilated in a single sitting.

Julien Temple, the young director of this wide-screen explosion, may have made his rep with music videos for the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Culture Club and David Bowie, but clearly there was always a corner in his heart for Vincente Minnelli, for Michael Powell, for Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, Max Ophuls . . . and dozens more. Picking your way through the rubble of homages makes “Absolute Beginners” a treasure hunt for the movie-minded.

Nineteen-fifty-eight: Brigitte Bardot and “Gigi”; “West Side Story” and Tommy Steele; Mary Quant, “the sack,” winklepickers and bumfreezers; mods and rockers; Beatniks; Hula-Hoops; bubble hairdos, and lethal tail fins. The year that Britain washed the gray (and the war) out of its hair once and for all, and surrendered to the youth cult in all its energy and (short-lived) idealism. (Let us not forget the ugly stain of the Notting Hill race riots of that long hot summer.)

“Absolute Beginners” has an image for almost every one of those references. Blond, pouty Suzette (singer Patsy Kensit) is a baby Bardot/Deneuve, down to her white lipstick. Colin (Eddie O’Connell), who loves her, is the quintessential teen-ager, prowling swinging London with his camera, loading up images for “his big show.” Suzette’s employer is Henley (James Fox), sniffy designer to Her Majesty; David Bowie is Vendice Partners, advertising mogul extraordinaire, and gay pop music impresario Harry Charms (Lionel Blair) “discovers” an unending stable of prepubescent teen idols.

(Gayness gets a real working over here; all the “nelly” stereotypes are trotted out for one last hurrah. Is anybody cheering? I don’t think so.)

Before the characters have jelled in your mind, the film makers jauntily abandon their development and simply throw them from one mega-number to another. Best of the bunch is Ray Davies’ amiably raunchy “Quiet Life,” performed on three levels of a sort of cut-away adult dollhouse, where definitely adult action is afoot (that’s Rice Davies as the hair-curlered housewife). There’s Sade’s hot blue lament, “Killer Blow.” And Bowie, slithering up and down a giant typewriter as he explains “That’s Motivation” to an awestruck Colin.

The movie’s detail is stunning; Temple tells his simple story against sets as heart-stopping as “One From the Heart’s” (though less deliberately stylized) or “Blade Runner’s” (John Beard was this production’s designer). In Oliver Stapleton’s photography there are boom shots and tracking shots to warm the cockles of Ophuls’ heart. Sue Blane, who designed the outrageously brilliant costumes with David Perry, has style befitting Fellini. And David Toguri’s tongue-in-cheek choreography releases us from the “Flashdance” tyranny at last. And for the music lover there is everything from Gil Evans to Slim Gaillard, with, of course, Bowie’s “Absolute Beginners” bookending the movie.

The trick to savoring the film comes from Balanchine’s hint to his dancers as they were going to perform to Stravinsky: “Dance on top of the music, not down in it.” Skim the pleasantly diverting surface of “Absolute Beginners” (MPAA-rated: PG-13) and you can easily forget that there is nothing contained beneath.

‘ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS’ An Orion Pictures Corp. release. Orion Pictures Corp., Virgin and Goldcrest present A Palace Production of a Julien Temple film. Producers Stephen Woolley, Chris Brown. Executive producers Nik Powell, Al Clark, Robert Devereux. Director Temple. Screenplay Christopher Wicking, Richard Burridge, Don Macpherson; based on the novel by Colin MacInnes. Associate producer David Wimbury. Developed for the screen by Michael Hamlyn. Camera Oliver Stapleton. Choreographer David Toguri. Music arranged, conducted by Gil Evans. Editors Michael Brandsell, Gerry Hambling, Richard Bedford, Russell Lloyd. Costumes Sue Blaine with David Perry. Production designer John Beard. Art directors Stuart Rose, Ken Wheatley. Set dresser Joanne Woollard. Sound mixer David John. With Eddie O’Connell, Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, James Fox, Ray Davies, Mandy Rice Davies, Eve Ferret, Anita Morris, Lionel Blair, Sade, Tenpole Turner, Tony Hippolyte, Steven Berkoff.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (parents are strongly cautioned to give special guidance for attendance of children under 13).

Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.