MOVIE REVIEW : Sexual Revelation Takes Tame Turn in Monika Treut’s ‘Father’

Those who enjoyed German filmmaker Monika Treut’s forays into the wilder shores of love and sex in “Seduction: The Cruel Woman” (1985) are likely to find her latest, “My Father Is Coming” (at the NuWilshire), not only disappointingly tame but also even more meandering and amateurish than her much funnier “Virgin Machine” (1988). A mild, even passe variation on “La Cage aux Folles” or “Norman, Is That You?” is not what you expect from a director capable of delving provocatively--and sometimes hilariously--into the kinkiest sex.

In her film debut Shelley Kastner, who plays Vicky, a German actress struggling in Manhattan and coming to terms with her sexual identity as a lesbian, fortunately has an endearing presence. With much good humor Alfred Edel plays Vicky’s visiting father, a portly, slightly pompous but loving parent she fears will discover she is gay. Kastner and especially Edel are real actors but they are surrounded mainly by self-conscious non-professionals who consistently throw off what little pace and timing the film has in the first place.

Not surprisingly, Vicky’s new lover (Mary Lou Graulau), a no-nonsense Puerto Rican chef at the restaurant where Vicky works as a waitress, asks her, “Why don’t you just tell him the truth?” Vicky mutters something about how proud her father is of her and what a great little performer the hometown folks think she is. But this hardly passes muster as a reason for Vicky to avoid leveling with her father about her sexual orientation. It would seem that Treut wanted to turn loose a German lesbian in Manhattan’s raffish East Village, and this flimsy, outmoded premise for getting Vicky’s story under way is the best that she and co-writer Bruce Benderson could come up with.

The scattershot “My Father Is Coming” (Times-rated Mature for sex, language) brims over with sweetness and good humor and celebrates sexual diversity, but this is not enough to offset the truth that this film simply is a mess. There are awkward appearances by a self-proclaimed sex goddess (and nonstop exhibitionist) Annie Sprinkle and body-piercer Fakir Musafar.

Playing with “My Father Is Coming” is famous photographer Bruce Weber’s nine-minute “Backyard Movie,” in which he intercuts his family’s home movies with shots of one of his typically handsome, perfectly muscled young models, working out by a pool in the nude. All the while Weber’s written adolescent reminiscences are scrawled across the screen. By far the least pretentious and most amusing of Weber’s forays into filmmaking.

‘My Father Is Coming’

Shelley Kastner: Vicky

Alfred Edel: Hans

Annie Sprinkle: Annie

Michael Massee: Joe

A Tara release of a Monika Treut/Hyena Films/Bluehorse Films production. Producer-director Monika Treut. Screenplay by Treut & Bruce Benderson. Cinematographer Elfi Mikesch. Editor Steve Brown. Music David Van Tieghem. Art director Robin Ford. Sound Richard Borowski. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes. In English and German, with English subtitles.

Times-rated Mature (for sex, language).