DVD: The Owls Pounds Another Nail into the Coffin of the '90s

What happens when riot grrrls become women of a certain age? That's the provocative question posed by The Owls (out this week on DVD from First Run Features), from its opening-credits montage of ACT UP demonstrations giving way to Prop 8 marches to the casting of '90s lesbian indie-film icons Cheryl Dunye (who also co-wrote and directed) and Guinevere Turner in this tale of a washed-up all-girl punk band who discover that they are now "older, wiser lesbians" (the expression that gives the film its title).

The "wiser" part may be a matter of opinion, since these gals still party, screw around, and break each others' hearts no less than they did back in the day. But perhaps, in the new millennium, they're realizing that this sort of behavior is less attractive than they originally thought.

Iris (Turner) was once the lead singer of a combo called The Screech, but now she just drinks heavily and hopes to sell off her house in the L.A. hills for some much-needed cash. Her former bandmate MJ (V.S. Brodie, Turner's co-star in Go Fish) seems unwilling to give up on either her long-ended relationship with Iris or her squatting residence in her ex's house. Sara (Lisa Gornick), the third band member, is in a rough patch with her own girlfriend, the controlling Carol (Dunye). (Carol longs for the politics and activism of the '90s as much as the others miss their fame.)

Oh, and uh, they're all implicated in a murder. But you know how complicated longtime friendships can be.

Dunye emerged in the New Queer Cinema scene of the 1990s with The Watermelon Woman, and she juggles a fairly lo-fi aesthetic with jazzy flashes like split-screens and improvised scenes where the actors address the camera as themselves and talk about the characters they're playing in the movie. It's a lot less precious than it sounds, though, and somehow manages to give the proceedings an extra level of unpredictability by throwing more curves at the audience.

While queer indie cinema has given us plenty of talented writers and directors, it hasn't provided us with a lot of what we think of as movie stars. Guinevere Turner stands as an exception to that. While I have (full disclosure) known her for more than 15 years, I still call her "Miss Turner" with almost no irony whatsoever. She brings a level of glamour, of charisma, of that-thing-the-camera-loves that gives this scruffy flick a snappy jolt of adrenaline.

The Owls isn't the kind of movie that's going to cross over to the sort of moviegoers who wouldn't be caught dead at a film festival, but if you missed it during its own fest run last year, you just might find it an interesting puzzle to decipher.