Surrender Dorothy

Running time: N/A

What do you get when you cross Apartment Zero with Blue Velvet? Answer: a very strange, claustrophobic - in fact just generally phobic - chilling debut feature from Kevin DiNovis. Trevor, a busboy, is insecure in the outer world. He desperately wants, and yet is at the same time totally terrified of, women. Lanh, a young street junkie in trouble, needs a place to stay and to hide. Trevor allows him to stay in his apartment. In Lanh, Trevor sees someone weaker and more desperate than he is, and as he learns to ruthlessly manipulate the younger man using both intimidation and Lanh's dependency on drugs, his plans become more grandiose and utopian. He comes to believe not only can he create his own world inside his apartment, but also he can force Lanh to become his ideal woman - Dorothy. DiNovis' film has been a big hit at such disparate festivals as Munich and Slamdance, where it won the 1998 Grand Jury Prize and prompted critic John Powers to declare it "The weirdest and wildest film I saw in Utah in ten days." It is also impeccably (though invisibly) planned, never losing its seat-of-the-pants style immediacy.