Urbania

Charlie walks through New York at night, talking to strangers and looking for the trail of one particular man. The urban legends told around him work their way into the conversations and make up the film's texture: the man who wakes in a bathtub, the animal mistaken for a dog, the missing kidney. The narrative uses these not as entertainment but as an oblique way of describing what people do to each other. Who Charlie is looking for, and why, opens up slowly. At the centre of the film is a hate crime: Charlie is gay, and the man he is after attacked him and his partner. The film does not say so at the start, releasing it in pieces, which is also why the indirect telling through legends was chosen. It comes from Daniel Reitz's play, and the theatrical origin is audible in the monologues. Dan Futterman's performance works because it never turns the anger into display. Alan Cumming has a short but memorable part.