GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE SEPTEMBER 17, 1993

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Out-skirting the Old West

The Ballad of Little Jo Centrum Theater

Reviewed by Joseph Morris

Forget the pressed jeans, fancy boots and clean hats of television westerns. It's time to readjust your gun sights and zero in on The Ballad of Little Jo. This film is based on a true story of a society-bred young woman who is disowned by her family and forced to set out alone. In the first few scenes it becomes quite clear that single women in the Old West are less than citizens, and fair game for any man who feels a sexual urge.

Josephine decides to pass herself off as a young man to get through life. Wearing men's clothes (which was against the law!) and a self-inflicted scar, she travels as Jo and cautiously enters the not-too-pretty world of a rag-tag mining village. Not only does her ruse work, she is alert and smart and soon becomes as good as any of the men, always maintaining a standard of decency several notches above the herd mentality. While cheering for the determination of this true hero, we see the reproachable nature of the real "old west." Jo is forced to flinch and suffer in silence as women are mistreated.

Throughout most of the story, Jo is able

to maintain a loner's life, until a Chinese male servant enters the picture. Tension builds as she finds him attractive and he ultimately guesses her secret. The two loners, outcasts in a white man's world, become secret lovers. Jo longs to have herself accepted for who she is, following years of sexual denial. But in this unaccepting time period, does "coming out" make sense? The heroine is able to accept her future after seeing her former life mirrored in a society wife who passes through Jo's ranch.

Suzy Amis plays the title role with conviction, being tender as a woman and resolute as a young man. Director and writer Maggie Greenwald moves the story forward in leaps and bounds as significant events occur "a few years later," with the occasional flashback to clue you in about Jo's past.

The production is rich with detail and very true to a life of dirty streets, crude boarding houses, and people's winter coats made from unevenly stitched pelts of mixed fur.

The film is rated R, mostly, I believe, for one bloody rape scene; there is some partial nudity but the film overall is tame by today's standards. The Ballad of Little Jo is a compelling commentary on the subservience of women as much as it is the triumph of this one heroine in an era of legends.

Road picture travels Main Street U.S.A.

Where Are We

Cleveland Cinematheque Sept 17 and 18; 8 pm and 9:35 pm

Reviewed by Joseph Morris Traffic must have been snarled in the southern United States over the past two years-all those gay filmmakers touring around, documenting Americana "on the road." Here's another entry: Where Are We, produced, written and directed by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Epstein is a two-time Academy Award winner for The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. His partner, Friedman, collaborated as producer, director and writer for Common Threads and is now directing the film version of Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet.

But these very gay filmmakers from San Francisco did not set out to look for gay refugees in the South. They had enough money to take a film crew along for an 18day journey, interviewing people indiscriminately, on a bus, on a train, and stopping along the road in a van.

It's an amazing collage of simple, home-

spun folk, most of them being happy where they're at. Friedman and Epstein somehow ask just the right questions and must have a charming demeanor: the subjects are honest and forthright about personal issues. Questions like "Are you happy?" and "Do you have any regrets?" are not the type of fare that make great conversation openers with strangers, yet the people responded candidly.

The expertly edited video movie includes a couple of gay people and an obligatory AIDS segment—visiting a hospice in New Orleans-but the core is typical working class Americans, with a few eccentrics thrown in for spice. Some of the lines are priceless. There's an older man who called California another country, out of ignorance, not derision. And the young couple pricing trailer homes is anxious to start out as a family; the boy is committed and the girl is pregnant. "How old are you?" "Fifteen," she replies.

Where Are We takes an unblinking look at people we may tend to ignore; as such, it's an eye-opener. The Cleveland Cinematheque is at 11141 East Blvd. in University Circle.

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