MOVIE REVIEWS : Psychological Striptease in ‘Twenty-One’

Some people seem to live more intensely when they’re being photographed than in the flesh. One of them may be Patsy Kensit.

Kensit has the first prerequisite of a true movie star: she soaks up attention on screen. In Don Boyd’s “Twenty-One” (selected theaters), a sly, dryly cynical portrait of a sexually adventurous young British emigre in Manhattan, she is playing a demanding part, a virtuoso turn that requires her to interact with the other characters and the audience.

And Kensit manages this with effortless grace. She treats the audience as a confidante easily and naturally.

Kensit’s Katie murmurs or blithely rattles on; lets us follow her to work, ride with her in elevators, trail her down hallways, or curl up in her New York apartment. In a way, it’s a psychological striptease; it’s suggestive that the role was conceived and co-written by a man, director Don Boyd.

Katie is, by the false standards of her middle-class origins, a “bad girl”: promiscuous and a little careless. Yet, it’s clear that the movie regards Katie’s adventurism almost as heroism--perhaps the only heroism its bleakly hypocritical little world can contain. And though there’s no strain to the asides, there’s a certain strain, or archness, to the movie.

Boyd is 42, and though he started out as a director, he has spent much of the last decade as a producer, primarily for Derek Jarman and in the multi- auteur opera project “Aria.” He is obviously a first-rate producer--and parts of “Twenty-One” suggest he could be a first-rate director as well. His models are the European and American mavericks and he likes tricky movements and off-the-cuff stylization.

He is also extremely good at casting: not only with Kensit but with Rufus Sewell, who has the right soddenly pretty, love-me-I’m-a-loser look for Katie’s junkie boyfriend, or Patrick Ryecart as her bully lawyer of a lover, Sophie Thompson as her Restoration-comedy style girlfriend, and Maynard Eziashi (excellent in “Mister Johnson”) as her rub-a-dub buddy.

What Boyd is not first-rate at, even with the help of collaborator Zoe Heller, is screenwriting. In his case, almost all the writing seems unrealized: intelligent but a little hollow, daring but a little dry, all the points slightly telegraphed, all the dialogue slightly unspontaneous. And though Boyd is probably trying for a more intellectual frame, he’s not witty enough to sustain it. He never really takes Katie past the point of being an iconoclast’s dream girl.

Kensit does, though. As an actress here, her instincts seem unerring. I wouldn’t compare her to Julie Christie or “Twenty-One” (MPAA rated: R, for drug use, language and sensuality) to “Darling,” as some critics have been doing--but there’s no doubt that she inhabits the screen unself-consciously and deliciously.

‘Twenty-One’

Patsy Kensit: Katie

Jack Shepherd: Kenneth

Rufus Sewell: Bobby

Maynard Eziashi: Baldie

A Curb Communications presentation of a Morgan Mason production, released by Triton Pictures. Director Don Boyd. Producer Morgan Mason, John Hardy. Executive producers Mike Curb, Lester Korn, Carole Curb. Screenplay by Zoe Heller, Boyd. Cinematographer Keith Goddard. Editor David Spiers. Costumes Roger Murray-Leach. Music Michael Berkeley. With Patrick Ryecart. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (drug use, language, sensuality).