Thursday, April 30, 1998
Home Edition
Section: Calendar
Page: F-14
SCREENING ROOM;

Speaking Their Minds

'Flushed,' 'Angry Little Asian Girl' deliver bold dialogue on subjects often kept unspoken.

By: KEVIN THOMAS
TIMES STAFF WRITER

The American Cinematheque's Alternative Screen has come up with a lively program tonight at 7:30 at Raleigh Studios with Carrie Ansell's inspired and outrageous "Flushed," which will be preceded by four episodes of Lela Lee's scabrously funny "Angry Little Asian Girl."

When it comes to animation, Lee is a minimalist, using simple Magic Marker drawings, but boy does she have plenty to say. Her diminutive grade-school-age heroine unleashes a torrent of foul language whenever she's offended--and this happens a lot--by any behavior that strikes her as racist or discriminatory (or male chauvinist). Her unleashed rage is at once hilarious--so much tough talk from such a little girl--and therapeutic: The treatment she rightly objects to deserves the liberating verbal blowtorch she gives it. Lee leaves you suspecting that Lee's feisty heroine is saying out loud what a lot of Asian Americans, young and old, male and female, are often feeling but not saying.

"Flushed" is a classic instance of a filmmaker hitting upon a simple, potent idea and running with it. "Flushed" takes place entirely within the restrooms in a downtown Gen X-er New York club on a very busy night; it is so cleverly sustained that it could almost be mistaken for a documentary.

This 81-minute no-budgeter is a real test for a first-time filmmaker in several aspects. You know that such a film is going to be steeped in blunt talk about genitalia, bodily functions and sex, and Ansell manages to vary sufficiently the things men and women will say and do when they're among their own sex to sustain interest and invite affectionate rather than derisive laughter. (Ansell recognizes that everyone is different even if she or he says much of what others say.)