MOVIE REVIEW : Comic Relief : Film: Sandra Bernhard shows off her own amusing brand of pop narcissism in ‘Without You I’m Nothing.’

Sandra Bernhard’s one-woman show “Without You I’m Nothing,” which ran off-Broadway for six months in 1988, has been turned by co-writer and director John Boskovich into a conceptual art piece that inadvertently raises the question: Is it possible to be something less than a fan of Bernhard’s and still like this movie?

The answer is: Maybe. “Without You I’m Nothing” (rated R) is probably the closest above-ground movie equivalent to what Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey were doing in their ‘60s films; in other words, it both mocks and deifies its pop cultural referents.

Bernhard, in the course of the film, assumes a variety of personas and personalities, ranging from Nina Simone to a Jewish folk singer, a country-western crooner and a Cosmo girl. She’s splitting herself into these guises both to “realize” herself and also to mock that realization. The film (at selected theaters) seems to be about how, no matter how strenuously Bernhard tries for a makeover, she’s still ineluctably herself.

But just who is she? And, more to the point, why should the plumbing of her psyche be so important?

In the Warhollian world, of course, where celebrity--with its shelf-life of 15 minutes--creates its own aesthetic, these questions are largely irrelevant. Bernhard’s skimpy, quasi-stardom--her appearance in the 1983 “The King of Comedy” opposite Robert De Niro, her one-woman act, her appearances on “The David Letterman Show,” her self-publicized friendship with Madonna--is considered more touching and “real” and symbolic of the true, hard-luck nature of show business than genuine superstardom. In Bernhard’s arena, superstardom exists as a vehicle for camp adoration.

For those who, like myself, don’t key into any of this, the film can still be enjoyed on a more straightforward level, as a series of fairly funny, askew stand-up comedy routines. Boskovich, a conceptual artist making his directorial debut, doesn’t do anything ordinary. His staging--the way the theatrical sets keep mutating into different tableaux ranging from barns to city skylines--does more than backdrop Bernhard’s wayward routines. It infuses those routines. The directorial design, for better and for worse, is an emanation of Bernhard’s peculiar brand of pop narcissism, as well as a commentary on it.

Most of the film is staged in an imaginary L.A. nightclub where, on the advice of her manager (Lu Leonard), Bernhard has retreated, following her off-Broadway success, to regroup her talent and soothe her swelling, success-inflated ego. The club is attended primarily by blacks, and Bernhard’s personas are mostly black too. There’s even a black woman (Cynthia Bailey), beautiful, silent and diaphanous, who makes fleeting guest appearances. (The press kit describes her as Bernhard’s alter ego. Huh?)

Bernhard also re-imagines herself as a Gentile, and her evocation of a Norman Rockwell-ish family Christmas--in contrast to her own Jewish upbringing in Michigan and Arizona--is the film’s weirdo comic high point. She transposes herself to the ‘70s gay bar scene, to the Andy Warhol auction at Sotheby’s.

But Bernhard’s makeovers are predominately black, and it’s not always easy to figure out why. At its most irritating, the film seems to be using its avant-garde mumbo jumbo as a cover for some rather queasy attitudes about blacks. The film turns black soul into an aesthetic commodity; Bernhard transforms herself into an albino Diana Ross or Nina Simone as a way of seeming more exotic, more “animal.” It’s the kind of “tribute” that carries whiffs of condescension.

The film (selected theaters) may nevertheless be on to something with these racial makeovers. In the ‘50s and early ‘60s, hip was synonymous with black--to some extent, this has always been true of American pop culture. Bernhard may be acting out some sort of private, racial-sexual psychodrama in “Without You I’m Nothing” but the film also seems to be defining a new kind of hip: a meld of black power and gay cabaret. It’s as if the emotional sustenance that pop artifacts were supposed to provide us with in the Warhol era had run out, and in its place was a reversion to its opposite. In “Without You I’m Nothing,” soulessness meets soul.

‘WITHOUT YOU I’M NOTHING’

An M.C.E.G. presentation. Executive producer Nick Roeg. Producer Jonathan Krane. Director John Boskovich. Screenplay Sandra Bernhard and John Boskovich. Cinematography Joseph Yacoe. Arrangements and original music Patrice Rushen. Production design Kevin Rupnik. Choreography Karole Armitage. Costumes Raymond Lee. Film editor Pamela Malouf-Cundy. With Sandra Bernhard, Steve Antin, John Doe, Lu Leonard, Cynthia Bailey.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.)