Neptune's Rocking Horse. Written, produced and directed by Robert Roznowski and Robert Tate. USA. Colour. 104 minutes. Bermuda International Film Festival. Showing again tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. Little Theatre.

This is a movie about characters whose lives become in some way connected through witnessing Police beat and arrest a black drag queen on a street in New York.

About half of this movie is so disjointed as to be annoying, with the short cuts a bit too short to fully capture the viewer. The pace slows down, however, settling into some what of a recovery of the story line at the last half. The character of the palm reader who sets up on the street near where the incident takes place serves as a good means of bringing the others together in the plot.

A saving quality is the spirit and energy you can see the directors and actors have put into this first feature film by Robert Roznowski and Robert Tate.

They have put together a movie about prejudices both within and outside of the gay community. The drag queen (Roderick Leverne) introduces the plot with an aside on the balance between masculine and feminine. The others are Tom, a closeted gay handyman, Geena, a business woman, Malcolm, a black doorman, Sadie, an older woman who cares for an ageing loved one, an John, a gay activist, all of who feel some degree of sympathy and prejudice against the tranvestite.

After the beating and arrest scene, the characters walk away to their own lives seemingly affected by the scene. This is when the plot shatters into five pieces. In some way each of the characters is haunted by flashbacks of the incident. Sadie even has troubling hallucinations about the drag queen.

Unfortunately the Police incident takes on a significance in their lives the plot never makes clear. It all seems a bit of a stretch to imagine they were all so deeply affected by a simple bit of violence.

The stilted sort of acting by many of the characters doesn't help. This can be forgiven on a first try and in the context of a film festival. Certainly Lisa Herbold as Justine the palm reader is a standout from the rest. The title of the movie, `Neptune's Rocking Horse` is a palmistry term signifying balance in life between masculine and feminine, reality and fantasy, self-expression and restraint, according to one of the blurbs given out in the press package for the movie.

The theme is fleshed out in the second half when another gay tells Tom, who is on the verge of admitting his homosexuality, that there's a lot of room in between the closet and the clubs for him to find out where he fits on the scene.

The last scene, when Justine muses to a customer about whether she should read the palm of her infant, verges on the lyrical, and is very well written and acted. Elsewhere we are mostly treated to not particulary imaginative dialogue.

There is confrontation and arguments between the heterosexuals and the homosexual characters, making it a set piece, a stance by the filmakers for more understanding of the gay community.

As such `Neptune's Rocking Horse', might be classified as an advocacy movie.

However one is left wondering at the end "What are we to think?'' It's just too busy a plot to hang a theme on. Except for Justine's closing monologue, the film never seems to progress beyond a few set pieces.

The movie received good reviews from publications such as The Philadelphis Inquirer, and industry magazine Variety, so other viewers may have a radically different impression of Neptune.

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