Memphis international

Ira Sachs uncovers Forty Shades of Blue in Tennessee soul.

By Johnny Ray Huston

IRA SACHS IS an anomaly among US directors, a Southerner whose style comes across as European rather than stars-and-stripes, for a start. His 1996 debut feature, a Huck Finn update called The Delta, is the most interesting gay film to emerge from this country in the past decade. But capped by an act of impotent revenge, its meandering tale of the fractured lust-bond between a Vietnamese drifter and a rich, white closet case won him no feel-good friends among an already tiny audience. The main prizewinner at this year's Sundance fest, Forty Shades of Blue is a slight step up commercially, Sachs's fractional 21st-century answer to Altman's Nashville. Any potential queer aspects have been relegated to the illicit-romance subtext of a tale that bathes a trio of cold, cold hearts in the warmth of Memphis soul music. But once again, the commanding view here is that of an outsider.

There is more than a trace of Sam Phillips to the bearded, sweater-vest sporting Alan James (Rip Torn, with gusto), a music-biz legend who receives, as the film opens, the type of lifetime honor that might dent the masculinity of a less cocksure man. Accustomed to getting what he wants, blustery and bearish Alan thinks nothing of abandoning his much younger Russian girlfriend, Laura (Dina Korzun), at the festivities so he can score some illicit nookie. This leaves her to drunkenly accept a ride home from a stranger whose advances she's forced to fight off as Alan's bitter son, Michael (Darren Burrows), secretly watches from the shadows of a guest bedroom. A teacher, angry-eyed Michael might soon be a dad as well, though his marriage is on shaky ground – a circumstance that causes him to take his temper out on Laura when they officially meet the next day.

From rocky beginnings, a bond forms between Michael and Laura, the type that can only mean trouble. One of Forty Shades' distinguishing fac tors, though, is that none of the three main characters behaves or acts according to narrative code; Laura in particular reveals a new facet with each appearance – some endearing, others self-destructive. She speaks Russian to Sam, her three-and-a-half-year-old son with Alan. She's not afraid of disagreeing with the gossips at the local country club. She's a lyricist, and in the last of the film's time-stopping musical moments, she sings her latest song a capella to an empty house – the chilly domain she and Alan call home.

Sachs favors the odd rhythms that come with strained relationships, and he can be counted on to frame shots unconventionally, often maximizing discomfort. Alan's brutish bedroom manner on award night is cropped in a manner that emphasizes his age and flagging machismo before highlighting his tendency to smother those he knows. Laura's hands are often viewed in close-up, a cutting irony considering this blue angel in an air-conditioned cage has little power to truly alter her surroundings. Korzun's might be the most repressively nuanced and haunting performance by a woman in an American film since Julianne Moore's in Safe, and her director is in perfect sympathy with it, even as he exposes Laura's imperfect misdeeds. Forty Shades of Blue was – along with Hustle and Flow and Junebug – part of a trifecta of Southern films at Sundance this year, and to these eyes, it's the hard-edged prize gem. Neither the characters nor the movie that contains them have any interest in courting crossover or playing cute.

'Forty Shades of Blue' opens Fri/14 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.