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BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

Gender boundaries may blur in Harry Dodge’s film, but the gut emotions of motherhood and daughterhood remain keen. Shy (Silas Howard), a butch androgyne from the sticks (boy or girl? "Both," he tells some curious kids), heads to San Francisco to rob a bank. But along the way he detours from Bonnie and Clyde to The Wizard of Oz after bumping into Valentine (Dodge), another gender anomaly with twin chin whiskers that make her look like a sardonic catfish. Valentine suffers from a poetic logorrhea and down-and-autism. Despite Shy’s inept intervention and the care of her lover, Billy (Stanya Kahn), she needs to be reunited with her long-lost birth mother and told she’s "all right." This could have been a precious oddity but for Dodge’s gift for verbal, musical, and visual rifts; it’s reminiscent of Gus Van Sant before he headed off to the happy Good Will Hunting ground. (98 minutes)

BY PETER KEOUGH

Issue Date: October 24 - October 31, 2002
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