David Boreanaz

(...)

That leaves Alan Cumming’s indescribable and inexplicable "Suffering Man’s Charity," which also premiered in downtown Austin’s lovely Paramount Theater on Friday, just before "The Lookout" and for a much smaller crowd. Those who didn’t show up missed seeing Cumming himself as a queeny, middle-aged music teacher who winds up imprisoning and torturing a young hustler played by David Boreanaz (of "Angel" and "Buffy" fame), who is wearing women’s underwear and tied up with Christmas lights and duct tape (oh, and heavily medicated with sleeping pills). "Suffering Man’s Charity" is just that kind of movie: It opens as if it’s going to be a sad-sack gay comedy in a lesser Tennessee Williams mode. And then it goes completely insane.

Even before we get to Boreanaz and the Christmas lighting, we’ve already had Anne Heche as a femme fatale New York editor and Karen Black (Karen Black!) as a drunken, slutty hag stumbling around in her underwear and making obscene promises to Boreanaz’s rent-boy character. Later in the film, there’s a significant splatter quotient, an appalling vehicular accident, a vindictive ghost and a truly horrible New York literary party. This film is all genres at once, and a few that don’t yet exist.

Given Cumming’s far-reaching showbiz as a Shakespearean actor, kiddie-film villain (in "Garfield" and the "Spy Kids" series), novelist, indie director ("The Anniversary Party") and outspoken activist on gay issues, I have no doubt he can find a distributor for this willfully grotesque picture eventually. It’s either a total disaster or a midnight movie cult hit in the making, and on first viewing I’m not sure which. As I told myself while I stumbled out into the steamy streets of Austin, for better or worse there was nothing like that at Sundance.