MOVIE REVIEWS : A Look at Lesbian Sensibility at the Nuart

Barbara Hammer’s “Nitrate Kisses” and Monika Treut’s “Female Misbehavior”--which open tonight at the Nuart for a joint six-day run--are not a double feature. You have to pay separate admissions for each. But they might as well be. They make a perfect match: two explorations of sexual “deviance” without coyness or calculated shock value.

These two documentaries on the lesbian sensibility are both done defiantly. They’re frank, unabashed, provocative, and, at least by “silent majority” standards, deliberately objectionable.

Why? Sheer explicitness. Hammer’s film includes uncensored lesbian and gay lovemaking, embedded in a cultural crazy-quilt of homosexual imagery from the past: outtakes from James Sibley Watson and Melville Weber’s 1932 biblical “art” film “Lot in Sodom,” in which barely clad men in quasi-Gomorrah garb writhe suggestively, scored to a soundtrack drawn from the “AC/DC Blues Gay Jazz Reissues” from Stash.

Treut’s “Female Misbehavior,” by contrast, is bald, up-front: a collection of four linked interviews with four women of varying levels of anti-respectability, their talk as gamy as their actions are occasionally explicit. The quartet ranges from the notorious “politically incorrect,” anti-feminist, pro-pornography academic Camille Paglia--who rattles on like a Woody Allen soulmate from hell--to a lesbian dominatrix (Carol) to a transsexual in mid-change from woman to man (Max), all the way to Annie Sprinkle, an adult movie actress whose specialty is usually confined to the bathroom.

And yet, each film has a serious core, though anyone who senses from the descriptions above that they’d be offended had better stay away--because they probably will. Actually, their unbuttoned stance is a deliberate strategy. The directors, wanting to pull us into an angle of vision, do it in the bluntest way possible: by disguising nothing and flaunting their deviance.

The films are intended, partially, to celebrate lesbianism--or in Treut’s case, to celebrate a broader category of women who are rebellious--and what makes them interesting to those beyond their primary audience is their honesty, the way neither director filters nor dilutes her material to make it more palatable.

Hammer’s “Nitrate Kisses”--the first feature by a director who has been a mainstay of alternative-sex film festivals for decades--was made for a threadbare $21,000, and Treut’s quartet of interviews wasn’t originally intended as a feature. The earliest piece, with bondage-and-discipline expert Carol, was shot a decade ago; the two with Paglia and Max, more recently.

These films are not for everyone, especially the easily shocked. The self-administered “Mature” rating on each--for nudity, sexuality and language--is no joke; three decades ago, they would certainly have been proscribed. But, then, three decades ago, so, probably, would any public revelations by most of the people here. By bringing them all into the light of day, “Nitrate Kisses” and “Female Misbehavior” suggest that human beings are much more than the sum of their sex acts.

‘Nitrate Kisses’

A presentation of Strand Releasing. Director-Producer-Cinematographer-Editor Barbara Hammer. Running time: 54 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (sexuality, nudity, language.)

‘Female Misbehavior’

Camille Paglia: Herself

Annie Sprinkle: Herself

Carol Macho: Herself

Max/Anita Valerio: Herself

A First Run Features release of a Hyena Film production in association with Hamburger Filmburo and Kampnagelfabrik. Director-Producer Monika Treut. Cinematographer Elfi Mikesch. Editor Renate Merck. Sound Tonike Traum. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (language, nudity.)