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Indie Flicks: 'Windows' on the world

Facing Windows (R) (102 min.) A forbidden love affair from 60 years ago is paralleled with a forbidden contemporary romance in Facing Windows, a well-acted, often absorbing Italian drama which suffers from an excess of sometimes silly subplots.

Massimo Girotti, the late screen veteran who made a splash in Luchino Visconti's 1942 classic Ossessione (the first of three adaptations of James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice), turns in superb work as Davide, a handsome, mysterious elderly man found wandering around Rome.

His rescuers are low-paid laborer Filippo (Filippo Nigro) and his wife, poultry inspector Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), who doesn't want the octogenarian stranger to stay with the couple and their two young children.

Giovanna's resistance, though, melts as she begins to understand Davide's Nazi-era traumas, and his passion for pastrymaking (here's where the silliness enters). She's slowly drawn into a search for the truth of Davide's identity; her quest includes a detour into the arms of the dashing young bachelor whose apartment is opposite hers.

The combination of ingredients - voyeurism blended with a would-be adulterous affair, snatches of World War II history, a gay love story and a passion for pudding - is intriguing although nearly too rich for consumption. B+

Rockets Redglare! (NR) (89 min.) Rockets Redglare!, an unapologetic, off-putting documentary about the late New York performance artist of the same name, probably amounts to must-see filmmaking for the subject's friends and acquaintances. That group includes several actors and directors who offer their reminiscences, including Steve Buscemi (also an executive producer of the film), Willem Dafoe, Jim Jarmusch, Matt Dillon, Julian Schnabel and Alex Rockwell.

For the rest of us, it's only intermittently entertaining, a haphazard portrait of a long journey to self-destruction that began in the womb. Rockets, who died at 52 in 2001, was born Michael Morra to a 15-year-old heroin addict. As a child, living around New York City, he was exposed to multiple horrors: His mother traded sex for money, and his father and uncle murdered a man in the family's apartment.

"Everything I liked I ever did to excess," Rockets tells his friend Luis Fernandez de la Reguera, the documentary's director. That's no exaggeration. Rockets, once a drug dealer for Sid Vicious, consumed vast amounts of alcohol, coke and food, and near the end of his life he weighed more than 600 pounds.

He also loved to excess, collecting and discarding girlfriends, and accumulating a legion of buddies, many of whom attest to Rockets' value as a friend. They praise his brilliant work as a character actor in more than 30 films, demonstrated in clips from independent productions (Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise) and major studio releases (Big). It's a poignant story, one made less sad by its charismatic star's insistence on a lifestyle that amounted to slow suicide. C+

Touch of Pink (R) (91 min.) - We've seen almost everything in Ian Iqbal Rashid's comedy before: a gay man coming out to a family he's certain won't understand, an Indian clan gathering for an event marking so many films from that part of the world - a wedding. Touch of Pink is something borrowed from a lot of movies, thankfully retaining some of the charm that previously worked.

What the movie adds to the mix is an interesting performance by Kyle MacLachlan (Blue Velvet, Dune) as, of all people, deceased Hollywood icon Cary Grant. Not a ghost, but a figment of Alim's (Jimi Mistry, The Guru) imagination, a guide to acting cooler than anybody in Alim's position has a right to be. MacLachlan does it without much makeup except gray touches in his hair, but with a perfect vocal impersonation and a solid grasp on the posture and suavity that made Grant so debonair.

The title is a continuation of that conceit, since one of Grant's last films was the 1962 comedy That Touch of Mink. Even under those frothy circumstances, Grant was a commanding romantic presence, making his spirit a worthy role model for such a romantic shlub as Alim.

Aside from that clever stunt, Touch of Pink is run-of-the-mill material. Alim lives in London, an ocean away from his kin, but is being pressured to attend his cousin's Toronto wedding. His Muslim background would likely make his personal life seem unacceptable. Alim's mother (Suleka Mathew) makes a surprise visit to persuade Alim to make the trip. He must convince her that his lover Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid) is nothing but a roommate.

Rashid treats the material as if it's fresh, and that energy makes a minor difference on the screen. However, Touch of Pink isn't much more than a sideshow for anyone taking time away from the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival beginning today at Tampa Theatre. The competitive programming move and MacLachlan's spiffy performance are the only unique qualities about it. C+