THE PINK LENS

In New Queer Cinema’s response to the mainstream’s memorialising of AIDS sufferers comes a technicolour surrealist musical in which a 19th century adventurer goes in a quest to exonerate Patient Zero, the man accused of bringing HIV to America. Singing butthole puppets, a nude baritone trio in a bathhouse and sex with a ghost are all treats in store for the viewer in this bizarre and deliberately avant-grade miasma of ideas. It’s just a shame their composition as a movie is so disparate at times.