Vignettes Explore Love in the Time of AIDS

“Love Reinvented,” which opened a regular run Wednesday at the Music Hall (9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills), is composed of 10 vignettes underwritten by the French government to depict the gay experience in the age of AIDS. The omnibus takes its name from one of the segments, each written and directed by young filmmakers. Jour De Fe^te, its American distributor, has added David Ottenhouse’s “Close To” at the beginning and Stephen Jones’ “Cherish” at the end to create a 72-minute feature.

The American bookends are the strongest of the dozen episodes. In the swift, succinct “Close To,” Alexis Arquette plays a gay man who comes on to a handsome blond guy (Steve Wood) in a Manhattan subway train, but passion, once subsided, gives way to volatile, conflicting emotions and actions. Jones’ “Cherish” is a heart-tugger in which a young man (John Adam), preparing to go on his first night out since the death of his lover (Russell Paige) from AIDS, is flooded with tender and passionate memories.

All 12 vignettes are concerned strictly with the young and good-looking, but the French entries go for a typically Gallic fatalism and cool detachment. Only two of the French 10 deal with women coping with AIDS. A number of them touch on AIDS directly, with one couple having sex first and thinking about safety after the fact; another couple takes off for a weekend with one of the men realizing he forgot to bring condoms. One of the most erotic segments features a handsome bodybuilder (Jean-Michel Monzoc) with a penchant for nude sunbathing who recalls a lover lost to AIDS. One of the most effective finds a young man passing himself off as a male hustler simply because he’s lonely for companionship. All these and other vignettes have been done with finesse and dispatch. “Love Reinvented” adds up to an effective feature. (310) 274-6869.

By coincidence this weekend’s offering in Strand Releasing’s 10th Anniversary Retrospective, Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Sunset 5 (8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood), is “Boys Life II,” a quartet of short films dealing with a young gay man’s coming of age, a 1997 follow-up to Strand’s similar, successful 1994 trilogy, and equally accomplished and entertaining. What’s significant about this group of films is that the filmmakers depict most of their gay characters as mainly indistinguishable in demeanor and appearance from their straight friends, which brings a refreshing breath of reality to their stories.

Opening the program is Nickolas Perry’s wise and amusing “Must Be the Music,” in which a young man (Milo Ventimiglia), who has only recently come to terms with his sexuality, goes out on the town with pals and encounters the man of his dreams at a disco. Complications unfold with wry humor. Tom De Cerchio’s “Nunzio’s Second Cousin,” which is funny and knowing, is a gratifying revenge vignette in which would-be gay-bashers make the mistake of wielding a bat at a tough, burly guy (Vincent D’Onofrio) who happens to be a gay Chicago cop. Both of these deft vignettes, the second of which features Eileen Brennan as the cop’s mother, are expertly paced with clever twists. Mark Christopher’s “Alkali, Iowa,” depicts an American heartland virtually identical to that of “Field of Dreams” in which a husky young farmer (J.D. Cerna) probes into his family’s past--part of his coming to terms with his own sexuality. Mary Beth Hurt plays the farmer’s mother. The collection’s standout, as it has been in previous programs of short films, is Peggy Rajski’s Oscar-winning “Trevor,” which confronts with a jaunty affection the horrors of puberty for many gay males and boasts a flawless performance by Brett Barsky in the title role. If there is a complaint to be made of this fine collection, it is that, at a 74-minute running time, it could easily have included another film. (213) 848-3500.

*

John Doyle’s “Extraordinary Visitor,” which opens a regular engagement Friday at the Music Hall, is an ecclesiastical comedy-fantasy that has the capacity to repel swiftly, but it does have its staunch admirers. The Virgin Mary appears before the pope to tell him that God is so dismayed by mankind that he will destroy us all come the millennium. But she intervenes to the extent that he will allow John the Baptist to materialize on Earth, where he has but one week to find a sign of hope among human life. John (Raoul Bhaneja) pops up in his namesake community, St. John’s, Newfoundland. The humor is self-consciously cutesy, and the entire film’s premise can swiftly put you off if you’re not into this sort of thing.

*

On Friday, the American Cinematheque opens a one-week run at the Lloyd Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian (6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood) of Mike Hodges’ 1971 gritty and stylish gangster classic, “Get Carter.” Michael Caine is terrific in the title role as a suave British hit man investigating his brother’s death. Loaded with atmosphere and a time capsule of ‘70s hip, “Get Carter” was recently ranked by the British Film Institute as one of the top 20 British pictures of the century. It was effectively remade in 1972 by George Armitage as “Hit Man,” starring Bernie Casey; it was one of the best films of the so-called blaxploitation cycle. Warner Bros. is planning another remake. A deluxe CD of the film’s brooding, jazzy score composed by Roy Budd, which was released only in the U.K., will be on sale at the Egyptian along with the original British poster for the film.

Information: (323) 466-FILM.

*

Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” which its director once said was the best movie he ever made, was restored to its original 121-minute running time by Turner Entertainment in 1988. It is set to screen in that restored version at the New Beverly Cinema along with Sergio Leone’s 1966 “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” Sunday through Tuesday. Even when shortened by 15 minutes, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” was wonderful, a deeply felt elegy to the passing of the Old West surely made in response to the confusion and bitterness of the Vietnam era.

The crucial restorations are the black-and-white prologue and epilogue set near Las Cruces, N.M., in 1909, which involve Pat Garrett (James Coburn) in an ironic fate that adds a crucial level of meaning to what happened between Garrett and his old friend and onetime fellow outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) at Fort Sumner, N.M., in 1881. Also, Bob Dylan (who has a small role as one of the Kid’s followers) sang only twice in the original version; in MGM’s release version, his lyrics were repeated constantly throughout the film.

The film has a deliberately leisurely pace, essential to the intentions of Peckinpah and screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer. Enhancing the film immensely is Dylan’s seductive guitar score, underlining the ritual quality in the thrust-and-parry of the friends turned adversaries and the inevitability of their final, decisive confrontation.

Can the actual Old West ever have had the irresistible dust frontier elegance that cameraman John Coquillon and art director Ted Haworth gave it? The film is rich in visual textures, from its beautiful vistas and shadowy interiors to its great-looking clothes. It’s as if Peckinpah graced everyone in front of the camera with the sense of style he himself possessed so deeply.

Of course, Coburn and Kristofferson have always been stylish actors, but Chill Wills and Slim Pickens? Indeed, the film’s long roster of players boasts a lion’s share of Hollywood’s great male character actors--plus a memorable turn by Katy Jurado. “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” is absorbing from start to finish. It’s a big, romantic macho fantasy, not self-conscious yet aware of what it is, reveling in its masculinity with good humor but recognizing that the bravado of fast draws always ends in a slough of corpses.

“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” is not against law and order but quietly asks whom it serves. And in asking this, Peckinpah defines violence at its most foolish as that which occurs when men have allowed their sense of honor and self-respect to be exploited for unworthy purposes.

Finally, beyond evoking the passing of the old order and questioning the quality of the new one, Peckinpah asks us to ponder what civilization is itself.