Un©ut

'Learn your alphabet,' this genre bending exercise in cut-and-paste film polemic exhorts us. 'C' is for copyright, censorship and circumcision, which are central, and to some extent connected, themes at play here. There are three principals - Peter (Achtman), Peter (Ferguson) and Peter (Damon) - whose various projects and passions provide an index to the film's own: Peter is writing a thesis on 'The psychosexual meanings of circumcision and the foreskin'; Peter has a crush on Pierre Trudeau, manifested in pastel cartoons of doubtful taste and authenticity; and Peter is compiling a scrapbook home video barrage of whatever material comes to hand, set to a rewrite of the Jackson 5's 'ABC'. How else to describe it? The film perhaps does for the docu-drama what Mark Rappaport's ciné-essays (From the Journals of Jean Seberg, etc) do for the film course lecture: it's a witty, imaginative and frequently subversive reappraisal of cinematic form, technique and focus, although it lacks Rappaport's discipline and depth.