'TARNATION' A HOME MOVIE LIKE NO OTHER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE DESERVED darling of this year's film festival circuit, Jonathan Caouette's ``Tarnation'' is an extreme, and singular, example of personal filmmaking. Both nakedly revealing and irrepressibly arty, it's a therapeutic home movie made as form-redefining documentary morphed into aesthetic object.

Fans of experimental cinema will see the heavy influence of Kenneth Anger in Caouette's first feature-length work. But ``Tarnation'' is so personal an expression of the 31-year-old filmmaker, and so thoroughly designed around the people he's closest to, that no previous model really applies.

Caouette has been recording his life since an early age, using a variety of media: Super 8 film, various video formats, still photography, phone answering machines, more. And boy, did he have material.

When she was young, Caouette's mother, onetime beauty queen Renee LeBlanc, fell off the roof of her Texas home. This probably didn't cause any serious damage, but fearing that their daughter had become ``slow,'' her parents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis, followed questionable advice to subject Renee to electroshock treatments. The result has been a lifetime of severe mental illness.

Caouette's father beat a hasty retreat (like much in the movie, their reunion some quarter century later is poignant tragicomedy), leaving the boy at the abusive mercies of foster parents and, later, his wacky grandfolk. He grows up emotionally disassociative, sexually confused (though mighty gay, Caouette apparently has a son of his own somewhere - but that's another movie) and one highly imaginative drama princess.

And he took the footage to prove it. But much of it, shot cheaply, was in pretty bad condition before Caouette discovered the iMovie program on his boyfriend's new computer. Caouette ran his personal archive through the digital wonder and, for a reported cost of $218.32, cut it together into ``Tarnation.''

He also got a little carried away with all the color and optical effects iMovie can perform. The film often plays like a ``Natural Born Killers'' formal freak-out broadcast straight from Caouette's subconscious. The imagery is often beautiful, sometimes unforgettable and more than a little gratuitous.

But nothing about its flamboyant presentation can distract from ``Tarnation's'' riveting core relationship between Caouette and his mom. Surprisingly patient, considering the trauma he's experienced, Jonathan does his best to make the unpredictable Renee feel loved and welcome in the home he's made in New York. It doesn't always work - the woman is seriously disturbed - and Caouette is not above exploiting encounters with his mother, dad and grandfather for his own emotional solace.

But his love for Renee is too deep and heartfelt to be compromised by selfishness ... or, for that matter, artfulness. And that's what you'll remember most about this unique memoir movie.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

TARNATION - Three stars

(Not rated: children in jeopardy, language, drug use)

Director: Jonathan Caouette.

Running time: 1 hr. 28 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Caouette's home movie-turned-art documentary explores his dysfunctional family background and his movingly tender relationship with his mentally ill mother, Renee. A one-of-a-kind experience.

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Photo:

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette turned the camera on himself and his mentally ill mother, Renee, in the home movie-turned-art documentary ``Tarnation.''