Welcome Says the Angel

First released in 1996 but shot four years earlier, this ultracheap indie from Philippe Dib (who boasts no other credits) nicely captures the last gasp of the glam-metal fashion era in Los Angeles. Shame there's not a lot of plot to go along with it. Drifter Joshua (Jon Jacobs) meets junkie Anna (Aysha Hauer), and the two get high, have sex and try to get clean within the confines of her apartment. The initial setup is strong, with Joshua waking up to find himself chained to Anna's bed as a punishment for some unspecified crime he supposedly committed, but that issue is resolved too easily and unsatisfactorily. The film is very similar to another recent Laemmle Theaters rerelease, Noah Stern's 1999 The Invisibles, though it feels stagier, and would perhaps be better appreciated as a play. On the plus side, Hauer shows a lot more skin than Portia de Rossi did in Stern's film. And Jacobs is a fine actor, but the idea of giving him a retrospective of his own (which this film is a part of) seems premature. How about waiting until he's made some good movies?