AKA By Rick Curnutte Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University.

Director Duncan Roy's meditative, experimental drama, AKA, is a story told in thirds, each scene played from three different angels, with all three vignettes played out at the same time in the center of the screen. Roy shifts visual and audible focus between the three for clarity's sake, but there is never a throwaway moment in any of them.

This device was something that, when I heard about it, confounded me. Not only did it have the possibility of failing as a narrative element, but technically speaking, it could be very difficult to watch. But Roy has overcome what might have been artificial boundaries and created a film of amazing depth and resonance.

Dean Page (Matthew Leitch) is an 18-year-old working class Brit, a strikingly handsome lad who feels he has been held back by his environment (and, we found out later, he also has some very dark, disturbing secrets). He gets a job for a world-renowned art dealer, Lady Griffoyn (Diana Quick) and ingratiates himself into her world: dinner parties, luxurious clothing, high art. When the Griffoyns depart for a long holiday, leaving Dean to stay in their home, he begins enjoying the life for real, taking advantage a bit of his host's hospitality (feigned, we later find out), but also done in by the grandness of his new life. Returning from holiday, the Griffoyns demand Dean leave their house. When it is found out that Dean has been abusing an expense account, he flees for Paris

Upon arriving in France, and needing a job, Dean uses the Griffoyn name as a way to get into the Parisian art community: but not as a reference; as his own name. Assuming the identity of Lady Griffoyn's son, Alexander (Blake Ritson), Dean becomes ensconced in a life he's only dreamed of, meeting and being courted by several lovers, including a wealthy society-type Brit, David, (George Aspry) and a brash, young American, Benjamin (Peter Youngblood Hills). In the meantime, creditors from Britain are trying to track down Dean and prevent him from taking his charade any further.

AKA is an extraordinary meditation on identity. Dean is never comfortable in his own skin, not really even in that of those he most longs to be. Instead, he's haunted by his wrongdoings and a past that can't seem to go away, especially when he consummates his first gay experience with Benjamin, the entire time memories of being raped by his father playing in his head. This scene is harrowing and a tad uncomfortable, as Dean finds sexual release seemingly at the moment where his father does in the memory. Roy isn't afraid to draw the line between sexual confusion and sexual molestation. Dean isn't gay because his father raped him: he's just been unable to allow himself to be gay naturally, lovingly, because his only experience has been a violent, degrading one. Leitch is remarkable at capturing this decidedly complex character, all of his vanities, insecurites and inequities. Dean is like a non-violent Tom Ripley, a character so lost in the black hole of his identity, that even his own deceits can't rescue him.

When Dean finally has to face the consequences of what he did, and only then, he seems to be somewhat at peace. The film closes with Dean in prison, making friendly with inmates and guards alike, leading one to wonder if he's truly content, or if that happy-looking Dean is yet another creation, for the benefit of those who need to see his changed behavior.

Roy gives no black and white answers to these questions. And his visual technique pays off wonderfully, creating a multilayered style that reflects the cramped, isolated and cold world of high society, even as it opens up, narratively, the ways in which Roy can express his ideas. The greatest triumph of AKA, resulting from the three frame effect, is the sense that no one character is ever how he or she seems. As in real life, everything is presented from different points of view. Conversations are heard from close up and from a distance. Romantic encounters are viewed intimately and detached. No single moment in the film is exactly the same, as we are constantly given a different way to interpret what we are seeing. As AKA is telling a story about perceptions, memories, deceit, etc., the viewer is giving a literal representation of those ideas, allowing for a "wait, what exactly happened there?" participation that is both exhilerating and stimulating. Ultimately more than just a simple exercise in style, AKA emerges as one of the better filmed depictions of class struggle and an overt indentity crises in recent years.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002