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R: ARCHIVE, S: REVIEWS, D: 05/29/1997,

Schizopolis

The Sundance Film Festival might still be some puny little occurrence in snowed-in Utah if it hadn't been for the 1988 world premiere of Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape. That now-classic American independent was Sundance's big boom of instant glory; and it shows how ungracious the festival has become, and how unadventurous, that it rejected Schizopolis, Soderbergh's newest film, last January.

Unlike most recent Sundance features, which are underbudgeted Hollywood-alikes, Schizopolis really is a maverick film, an ambitious "auteur" work by a writer/director (and, this time, actor) insistent on taking major risks with form and content. We're talking about a daringly experimental narrative that hops about with A Hard Day's Night-type sight gags, though these are encased in a Kafka-in-Amerika dystopia.

The most successful part of Schizopolis could be subtitled "Dilbert Meets L. Ron Hubbard." Geeky Fletcher Munson (Soderbergh) is a skinny-tie insecure underling behind a desk in the self-help mega-empire of T. Azimuth Schwitters (a bullet-headed Mike Malone), guru of Eventualism. The corporate headquarters is hilariously aswim in spies and moles, and everybody bows before Eventualistspeak philosophy (sharply written by Soderbergh): "It's not about the healing of pain, it's about the pain of healing," etc.

Unfortunately, Schizopolis sways out of control with exasperating, indecipherable plot turns involving all types of doubles (the balding filmmaker replicates as a punster/swinger dentist). Still, a movie-cult following might be Schizopolis's non-dystopic future, as Soderbergh brings respect to that disparaged category of "honorable failure." At the Coolidge Corner.

-- Gerald Peary