MOVIE REVIEW : Debut Feature Touches on Taboo Theme

Steve Lustgarten’s “American Taboo” (opening Friday at the AFI USA Independent Showcase at the Monica 4-Plex) is well-titled, for it deals with sexual behavior that tends to incite disapproval across all levels of U.S. society. Yet Lustgarten’s $20,000 debut feature is so assured in its honesty and daring that it won the 1983 Student Academy Award for best dramatic film.

What Lustgarten has done--and why he has succeeded against formidable odds--is plunge us into the lonely world of a deeply withdrawn photographer (Jay Horenstein) of 30 who becomes obsessed with a teen-age girl (Nicole Harrison). Their unexpected relationship develops and proceeds relentlessly to a conclusion made to seem inevitable by Lustgarten’s perfectly sustained mood of an incessant longing that goes considerably beyond sex.

Horenstein’s Paul is a man whose shyness seems all but pathological. Although he craves to be a full-fledged photographer, he earns his living as the unappreciated, much-abused assistant to an arrogant fashion photographer. He’s such a loner that his own photographs are devoid of people; the exception is the beautiful girl who lives next door and who has become the object of his voyeurism.

Although Paul is approximately twice Lisa’s age, she is the aggressor, by far the more confident and worldly--at least on the surface. The intensity of their mutual attraction and the poetic, sensitive manner with which Lustgarten depicts it catches us up in their passion.

Filmed in Portland, “American Taboo” (Times-rated Mature for candid but not exploitative scenes of lovemaking) has a rich visual elegance. The portrayals Lustgarten elicits from Horenstein and Harrison are amazingly persuasive, especially in the case of Harrison, who keeps us guessing throughout as to whether Lisa really is as sophisticated as she would like us to think she is.

‘American Taboo’

Jay Horenstein: Paul

Nicole Harrison: Lisa

A Lustgarten Entertainment Organization presentation. Writer-director Steve Lustgarten. Producers Lustgarten, Sali Borchman, Ron Schmidt. Cinematographers Lee Nesbit, Lustgarten, Eric Edwards. Editors Lustgarten, Schmidt. Music Dana Libonati, Dan Brandt. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for candid love scenes).