`Frisk' Cast Like Who's Who Of Gay Stars

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

XX "Frisk," with Craig Chester, Raoul O'Connell, Jaie Laplante, Michael Gunther, Jim Lyons, Parker Posey. Directed by Todd Verow, from a script by Verow, Jim Dwyer and George LaVoo. Grand Illusion. No rating; includes nudity, sado-masochistic sex scenes. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The cast of this big-screen translation of Dennis Cooper's out-there 1991 novel reads like a who's who of American independent gay cinema.

There's Craig Chester from "Swoon" and "Grief," Jim Lyons from "Poison" and "Postcards From America," Alexis Arquette from "Threesome," Michael Walte from "Fun Down There" and Raoul O'Connell from "Boys Life." (Ron Vawter, originally cast in Lyons' role, died of AIDS before filming of his scenes could begin.)

But this is the sort of movie that makes their previous work look like "RuPaul of Sunnybrook Farm." It's not gay porn, exactly, but its central character, Dennis (played by Michael Gunther), is so obsessed with sado-masochistic sex that there's little room for much else during the movie's 83-minute running time.

He begins as a porn-worshipping teenager, tires of one lover (Jaie Laplante), sleeps with his lover's brother (O'Connell), then goes in search of kinkier kicks. He pursues a porn actor (Michael Stock) and a model (Chester) who once did fake snuff photos and now specializes in self-humiliation. Described at one point as a person who "has to kill people to get answers," Dennis teams up with a creepy couple (Lyons, Parker Posey) who are into murder and mutilation.

Although the sickest character is Posey's homicidal heterosexual, much of "Frisk" could be recycled on a right-wing propaganda tape such as "The Gay Agenda." With its ugly bathroom sex scenes, jaded dope-taking episodes and chapters self-consciously titled "numb" and "wild," the movie could be seen as homophobic. It's no surprise that "Frisk" sharply divided audiences at San Francisco's 1995 Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, where it had its stormy premiere.

According to the production notes, the characters are motivated by pornography, slasher movies and the evening news: "When their actual experiences fall short of this. . . when their relationships are more complicated than the reductions they're used to watching, they're disappointed." It's an ambitious theme, but "Frisk" doesn't begin to connect with it.

The story is presented from Dennis' point of view, though he's not present in several scenes and could not have witnessed Chester's final moments or Posey's casual assault on a grocer. We're encouraged to believe that much of his narrative is an exaggeration, and there's a dream sequence that suggests that the whole film could be someone's hallucination.

A few of the actors triumph over the deadening aura created by first-time director Todd Verow. O'Connell is good at puppyish longing and Posey can be chillingly cruel. Chester nearly walks off with the film with his sad portrait of a self-negating loser who identifies with Montgomery Clift and never stops asking strangers what he can change about himself. At his nakedest, he admits that "I used to do anything for someone who was nice to me."

But the center of the story is Dennis, played with minimal insight by Gunther. "I've had enough sex with enough guys to recognize how little skin can explain about anyone," he says at his most self-revelatory. Beyond that, he's a mystery, and not an especially intriguing one.