A Look at Reel Women

Now that “Boogie Nights” has made the subject of porn films safe for mainstream viewing, the sexual devices in “Girl,” which opens the cleverly titled “Women in Shorts” film program Saturday at the Huntington Beach Art Center, seem as dated as love beads. In its own dopey way, Amanda Michener’s 17-minute movie is so puerile that it’s actually anti-pornographic.

There’s more wit in two lines of Jennifer Rothman’s “Wanderlust,” a likable 23-minute documentary about women in the long-haul trucking industry, than in all the would-be jokes in “Girl.” The women of “Wanderlust” say they don’t get much sex, given their many hours on the road, but when they do, they hope that other tractor-trailer drivers have the decency to abide by a golden rule of truck-stop etiquette: “When the antennas are rockin’, don’t come knockin’.”

What comes across most clearly, besides Rothman’s admiration for these women, is not only their independence and intelligence, but also the feminism that goes unspoken in their lives. The idea of women’s liberation as an ideology couldn’t be further from their minds. But they embody it in their daily experience, making a comfortable living on the margins of middle-class society without compromising themselves or their idiosyncrasies.

That’s more than you can say for the harried account executive played by Lili Taylor in Tom Gilroy’s 20-minute “Touch Base,” the other main film on the program and the most accomplished. Taylor, who made a splash last year as an unhinged feminist in “I Shot Andy Warhol,” puts on a sterling performance that exposes life in a company cubicle for what it is: controlled desperation.

With only a telephone and a personal computer as props--she ricochets between them, wheeling on her chair like a billiard ball--Taylor persuades us of a whole cast of characters at the other end of her communications. Her animated portrayal of a company drone, never overdone, ranges through a spectrum of real emotions.

“Touch Base” feels like an audition for something larger. But it works as a motion-picture snapshot of a moment in time, fresh and familiar, unlike the opaque title. Gilroy directed and wrote the script. Though he’s not good at titles--this one comes from the character’s need to “touch base” with a distraught colleague--he is good at dialogue. “Touch Base” has crisp, understated language. With Taylor delivering it, Gilroy is home free.

The other short films on the program are awfully slight, not to say sophomoric: Francine MacDougall’s “The Date” (five minutes); Carolynne Hew’s “Bangs” (eight minutes); Anita Bloom’s “Softly as I Leave You” (13 minutes) and Jennifer Gentile’s “My Pretty Little Girlfriend” (seven minutes). The visual sophistication of “Bangs,” about a Chinese Canadian girl’s concern over her looks, indicates a good eye for painterly composition and a technical facility worth encouraging.

On the whole, though, if not for the inflation of film culture well beyond its value, these short works would have little chance of being released as art films. (Saturday, 8 p.m., $4 and $7. [714] 374-1650).

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At the other end of the movie scale, the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach continues its survey of stars cast against type in “A Century of American Cinema” with the 1936 screwball-comedy whodunit “After the Thin Man,” (Saturday, 6:30 p.m., Lyon Auditorium, $4 and $5. [714] 759-1122).

William Powell and Myrna Loy, who star as Nick and Nora Charles, are not the ones cast against type; neither is their dog, Asta. All three are reprising roles from “The Thin Man” (1934), the first of the “Thin Man” pictures and much the best. (There were six.) The star in question happens to be Jimmy Stewart--thin to be sure, but not yet a star.

Stewart, whose schnook-like character in “After the Thin Man” is not quite the amiable Everyman he later became famous for, wouldn’t come into his own as a movie star until later in the ‘30s.

Powell and Loy were, by then, ripened stars--and in no small measure because of their roles in “The Thin Man,” as an insouciant pair of high-society detectives who between them could put away a trayful of martinis as well as a roomful of crooks.

But while “After the Thin Man” offers Powell and Loy plenty to drink and lots of fine banter, it doesn’t hold up as well as the first picture. The plot is not as tight, and, though by the same director (W.S. Van Dyke), the movie lacks the grace of James Wong Howe’s cinematography. His lighting and camera work give “The Thin Man” a smooth, luminous quality.

Perhaps having to work fast--”The Thin Man” was shot in 16 days on a “B” picture schedule--also lent the first outing spontaneity.

“After the Thin Man,” which should have benefited from production status as an “A” picture, has the look of dead lighting and static compositions thanks to the cinematography of Oliver T. Marsh.

In any case, Asta’s role is much enlarged. And that is something to be grateful for, says the museum’s adjunct film curator, Arthur Taussig.

“After all,” he jokes, “we know Asta is the real star of the show.”

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Also screening this week in Orange County:

* “Small Faces,” an intense, gritty prize-winning picture (the Michael Powell Award at the 1996 Edinburgh Film Festival), is being presented by the UC Irvine Film Society. Set in Glasgow, Scotland, it tells of three brothers, as seen through the eyes of the youngest, a talented 13-year-old artist. One brother runs with a gang, and the other longs to escape to art school himself. (7 and 9 p.m. Friday, UCI Student Center, Crystal Cove Auditorium, near Campus Drive and Pereira Road. $2.50-$4.50. [714] 824-5588.)

* “Samson and Delilah,” Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 Bible epic with a bewigged Victor Mature and a befuddled Hedy Lamarr, is hard to beat for unintended camp. The picture represents the quintessence of DeMille’s taste in all its vulgar splendor, from Samson’s terry-cloth leotards to the lion that looks like a stuffed animal and the cheesy-looking sets. (7 p.m. Wednesday, Argyros Forum, Room 208, Chapman University, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange. Free. [714] 744-7018)