MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Paris’ Burns With Story of Voguing : The documentary looks at the dancing cum performance art among black and Latino gays that has evolved into something subversive as well as idealized.

The title “Paris Is Burning” has a misleading ring. A friend wasn’t interested when it came to American theaters last year; she guessed it was a war movie, or maybe a love story big on melodrama and overacting.

Actually, Jennie Livingston’s documentary, first presented on the BBC in 1988, does have something to do with making war--and love, melodrama and overacting, too. But the only connection to Paris is the haute couture it evokes in the most unusual of ways.

“Paris Is Burning,” being shown tonight as part of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts’ “Windows Onto an American Landscape” series, is about voguing, a stylized dancing cum performance art that among black and Latino gays has evolved into something both subversive and idealized.

The film shows voguers, from relatively conservative cross-dressers to over-the-hill drag queens, playing out fantasies through competitive exhibitions.

The irony, suggested both amusingly and sadly, is that these people simultaneously confront the society that has rejected them and embrace its values. Whether the voguers are emulating gentry out of Town and Country magazine or top models from glossy fashion spreads, their objective is to cop the straight world’s styles and more elusive attitudes.

Livingston’s movie is set mostly at a competition in an Elks lodge in Harlem. In typical documentary fashion, she intercuts the actual (sometimes eye-opening but ultimately redundant) competition with interviews keyed to revealing the stories behind the giggling self-deprecation and angry defiance.

One young man does a ritualized walk intended to parody the beautiful women he would like to be. Then there’s Willi Ninja (who, thanks to Madonna’s brief interest in him, became a minor celebrity for a while), who makes an aggressive statement with his performing. It’s as if he’s trying to redefine sexuality itself.

* “Paris Is Burning” is being shown tonight at 6 and 9 at the Festival Forum Theatre on the Festival of Arts grounds, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. $4 and $5. (714) 494-1145.