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AKA

Most of us could identify with a plucky outsider fooling and foiling the rich and privileged, but first-time director Duncan Roy’s semi-autobiographical film manages to make the have-nots, the haves, and those in between equally unappetizing. In late-’70s pre-Thatcher England, gay teenager Dean Page (Matthew Leitch) rebels against his working-class origins by impersonating the wayward son of his insufferable aristocrat employer, Lady Gryffoyn (Diana Quick). The Dorian Grayish demi-monde of upper-class decadence and sado-masochism would offer some fascination and the hero’s outrageous deceptions might earn some respect were it not for Roy’s stylistic pretensions. AKA is shot in digital video in a split-screen triptych, a gimmick reprised from Mike Figgis’s Time Code. There it worked because it was integrated into the theme and the story; here it’s a distraction that doesn’t quite conceal the simple-minded assessment of the hero’s pathology (abusive father plus ineffectual mother equals futile search for identity and craving for supportive male love). As in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Catch Me If You Can (Leitch bears a resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio), a pasty-faced youth scams the wealthy, but this time it’s like watching from a bank of security monitors. (118 minutes)


Issue Date: April 16 - 22, 2004
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