`Kurt And Courtney': A Sad Saga, Far From Nirvana

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

XX 1/2 "Kurt and Courtney," documentary by Nick Broomfield. 99 minutes. Neptune. No rating. -------------------------------

For better or worse, "Kurt and Courtney" will probably stand as the ultimate representation of how horrible, strange and bizarre the whole Nirvana saga turned out to be.

The exciting young band that brought rock back to life and raised such great hopes for the future became merely a backdrop for the sordid soap opera of its leader, Kurt Cobain, his wife, Courtney Love, and their ups-and-downs (mostly downs) involving childbirth, drugs, fame and, eventually, suicide.

"Kurt and Courtney" is sad, creepy and slimy, from the opening closeup of the notorious, heartbreaking - and now iconographic - Seattle Times color photo of Cobain's dead body after his suicide, to the closing sequence of glamorous widow/movie star Love in haute couture at an ACLU awards banquet.

The movie is supposed to examine whether Cobain was murdered and Love was involved, but Broomfield, an English documentarian known for his films about serial killer Aileen Wuornos and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, doesn't really pursue the truth. You know little more about the subject when you leave the theater as when you came in.

What Broomfield is really interested in is creating a skin-crawling freak show. And there is no shortage of subjects for his prying camera, from Love's long-estranged father to a private detective obsessed with Kurt-was-murdered theories, from a junkie who claims to have photos of Kurt shooting up (which never materialize) to a couple of small-time celebrity stalkers.

Broomfield, the narrator and on-screen interviewer, turns out to be a creep himself, ambushing subjects (he almost catches the junkie doing drugs), baiting others, and crashing that ACLU banquet, where he momentarily takes over the podium to berate Love for her attacks on journalists.

The whole movie builds to a confrontation with Love at the banquet, but then Broomfield loses his nerve and lobs a few easy questions at her before she wanders off. The two stalkers, whom Broomfield has equipped with a camera, also chicken out at the same event.

Broomfield tries to make Cobain's aunt look square and naive, but she's the sunniest, most articulate and likable person in the film.

And her audiotapes of 2-year-old Kurt talking and singing (aggressively, as he did in Nirvana), as well as her photos and videos of him, are sweet and charming and the best reason to see the film.

"Kurt and Courtney" exploits Cobain as much, or more, than some of Broomfield's subjects. But if the movie is meant to make you feel awful about what happened to Cobain, and be suspicious about Love and her motivations, it succeeds.