Tattoo party

Films that'll get under your skin

I've kvetched before in this column about living-dead film adaptations of great lit that keep crawling our way. Among the past year's read-the-book-instead efforts: Jane Eyre and Emma, The Portrait of a Lady and Jude the Obscure.

Read-the-play instead: the teenybopper Romeo and Juliet. And I confess that my feet turn to concrete whenever I ponder a trip to Kenneth Branagh's four-hour Hamlet.

If not classics on film, what's the alternative? Glad you asked.

Tattoo movies!

That's my recommendation for something genuinely adventurous, a subgenre to be explored.

Virgin-skinned myself, I call on expert help from dARCY (her spelling) Vogelle, 21, the seven-time tattooed manager of Cambridge's Hollywood Express video store. She knows her movies ("I'm going through my Joan Crawford phase, one of the great Hollywood divas"), and she is committed -- aesthetically, spiritually -- to body art.

"I did not choose to get tattoos. They were always part of me," dARCY says. "I once lived with a tattoo artist, the father of my four-year-old son. Tattoo culture isn't the same as showing off a tattoo; serious people have more to say about their body art than `I was drunk.'

"Right now it's a cool thing to have tattoos, but I wish it weren't. It lessens the intensity of what tattoos are. I'll never remove mine. Never! In fact, I'll get more because it's an addictive thing."

Admiring what she calls "the tattoo lifestyle," dARCY despises the 1981 film Tattoo as "detrimental to tattoo culture. Bruce Dern is a nut who steals a woman and tattoos her against her will. If anything, real artists turn people off to body art if they aren't totally serious."

The Rose Tattoo (1955): "I like it that a woman gets a tattoo to immortalize her love." The Yakuza (1975): "There are Japanese gangsters with stunning traditional tattoos." Once Were Warriors (1994): "Most of the Maori men have them, but their tattoos aren't addressed at all. That's appealing. Usually, tattoos are an identification of someone who did something wrong."

dARCY's favorite tattoo movies are on video: The Illustrated Man (1969) and Irezumi (1983).

The first, from a Ray Bradbury fantasy novel, is about a weary time traveler who, removing his shirt, reveals astonishing "skin illustrations." Each suggests a tale of his life as he passes through time barriers. dARCY says, "I think of body art as a way of expression, with each tattoo telling a story, just as in this movie."

dARCY's most oft-watched tattoo film, Irezumi, is about a Japanese woman who tries to appease her lover, who is attracted to women with tattoos. "As she's slowly getting a traditional tattoo covering her whole back, she begins to realize that the tattooing is more about herself. She becomes freer, finds her worth."

dARCY can empathize. "At 14, I had my nose pierced and blue hair and a first tattoo on my wrist, a `home job' of a peace sign. My mother never tried to stop me, because I'm strong-willed, and she knew I was serious. Now she loves my tattoos. The only thing she doesn't like is my pierced tongue."

KAJ WILSON has stepped away after two productive years as director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Good job! Meet the new director: Newton's Sara Rubin, who worked in marketing for 10 years at Bank of Boston and who has freelanced as a marketing consultant relating to food, travel, the arts.

"I love film, but who doesn't?" Rubin says, introducing herself by phone from the Waltham headquarters. "I've been going to the festival since it started. But I've probably been hired more because of my experience as a marketing specialist. A key charge for the job is fundraising.

"The festival, November 6 through 16, will be the ninth, and we're looking already to the 10th, which will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel. I hope to have even more people attend, Jews and non-Jews."

NOT EVERY LEFTIST revolutionary is a sellout. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who left Castro's Cuba for a purer Marxism, died October 9, 1967, in a manger-sized schoolhouse in the hills of Bolivia, an unrepentant revolutionary. His last conversation, hours before he was summarily executed by the military, showed his unwavering political commitment. "My ideals come first," he told a peasant girl who brought him food. "I will do all I can do so that your future is better. I will bring tractors to build roads. I will make this a modern school."

That barefoot girl is now a mature woman, and her remembrances of Che's final moments provide the poignant conclusion to Ernesto "Che" Guevara: The Bolivian Diary, a most compelling feature documentary at the Brattle Theatre April 11 and 12. Zurich-born filmmaker Richard Dindo retraces Guevara's ill-fated Bolivian sojourn, 11 months during which a revolutionary army fell to pieces from starvation and decimation by the CIA-backed army. It's a Herzogian hero story, in the jungles and mountains, and we should be grateful that Dindo wished to tell it.