Groove

On the heels of Human Traffic and Better Living Through Circuitry, yet another film about rave culture. Greg Harrison's popular Sundance entry is an enjoyable amble through glow sticks, metallic-blue lighting, and pulsating techno-industrial music. Beyond that there's not much to the after-hours dance-club scene. A gangly writer wanna-be (Hamish Linklater, reminiscent of a young Jeff Goldblum) falls for a tragically hip nymphet (Lola Glaudini) with a few skeletons in her closet; meanwhile his brother, a chiseled scenemaker (Denny Kirkwood), proposes to his kittenish girlfriend only to get caught kissing another man. The high-powered DJs, including Polywog and John Digwood, prop up the romantic sideshow with their priestlike puppetry of the gyrating masses. The music is infectious and Harrison's aloof, documentary style produces a hypnotic, voyeuristic ambiance -- it's as if you were in the tinny San Francisco warehouse without the threat of headache or synthetic aftershock. At the Avon.
-- Tom Meek