Stonewall

Director Nigel Finch of BBC TV's 'Arena' series (who died of AIDS during editing) and New York independent producer Christine Vachon (Swoon, Go Fish) only partly succeeded in constructing a dramatic narrative around a legendary moment in the history of gay liberation, the 1969 riot outside the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village. The intersecting lives of drag queen LaMiranda, peachy-keen new boy Matty Dean, cross-dressing bartender Bostonia, and repressed bar-owner Skinny Vinnie were intended to cohere into an emotionally compelling whole. That this never quite happens is partly down to the ensemble (only MacVittie's Vinnie really makes us feel for him), partly a by-product of a tight budget and zero access to key locations (notably the Stonewall Inn itself). More significant, however, is the unresolved tension between the flashy, trashy side of the movie, which flaunts its all-conquering drag artistes to effect, and the documentary side which turns up all manner of uncomfortable details about the conditions gay men and women had to endure not that long ago.