It's "Presented by Andy Warhol," and, indeed, the opening shot doffs its hat to the master -- an obsessive close-up of Joe Dallesandro's sleeping head on a striped pillow, while "Makin' Wicky Wacky Down in Waikiki" radiates from a gramophone somewhere. It isn't long, however, for Paul Morrissey, taking directing credits after helping out with many a Warhol experiment, to steer the snapshot from conceptual stasis to narrative flow. Sort of an expansion of My Hustler, it could be dubbed 24 Hours in the Life of a Pimpled Adonis -- Dallesandro, ass up in the air, gets roused out of bed by wife Geraldine Smith; the tone is droll-druggy-sexy, with his nude bod rubbing against her fully-clothed one, languid kisses alternated with marital nagging about clean underwear. The goal is two hundred bucks for a gal pal's abortion, so Little Joe has a long day ahead of him in the New York hustlin' scene. Along the way, he shares a cupcake with his toddler, is molded into Olympic poses by elderly artist Maurice Braddell, and gets sucked off by Geri Miller while Factory drag figureheads Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis dote over some old glamour magazines. Messiness still reigns supreme, from faulty focus to loudly popping edits, yet the movie is nearly glossy next to Warhol's aesthesis -- Morrissey, a far less radical artist than his mentor, is nevertheless a more human one, and just as sex is scrubbed off judgmental prurience, so are all of his characters free from the grabby derision of Midnight Cowboy. The old john nattering on about "body worship," the go-go dancer's post-blow job monologue about being raped, the tranny sporting five o'clock shadow, the buff Korea War vet indulging in gym nostalgia while copping a feel -- all spilling-over souls, all viewed with the same tolerance, fondness, and lack of malice by a gaze sensitive to the ad-libbed blend of humor, blurred sexuality and the underlying alienation of changing times. With Patti D'Arbanville, and Louis Waldon.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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