AllMovie

A knowing meditation on the performative nature of sexual identity, No Skin off My Ass marks the emergence of Bruce LaBruce as a witty provocateur, if not as a polished filmmaker. Brimming with ideas about the importance of costume, stance, and attitude in the eternal dance of male desire, the film explores its themes through a narrative as fractured by financial limitations and inexperience as it is by formal experimentation and punk aesthetics. Every frame of this disjointed black-and-white feature gives the impression that LaBruce -- despite several previous Super 8 outings -- is teaching himself the art of filmmaking on a shoestring budget as he goes along. It's a testament to his nascent talent, then, that the writer/director packs so much sexual heat and intellectual weight into his often unashamedly manipulative juvenilia. As a performer and narrator, LaBruce is delightfully arch, his bejeweled hairdresser character a studied contrast in exterior placidity and inner sexual obsession. The affectless and beautiful Klaus von Brucker, meanwhile, serves as the perfect blank canvas for LaBruce/The Hairdresser's overintellectualized desires. As The Skinhead's wonderfully wise and matter-of-factly bohemian sister, G.B. Jones gives the most fluid and compelling performance; she's also quite funny, lending a strung-out vigor to proceedings that otherwise teeter between earnest and tongue-in-cheek. In the end, however, this is a film less about characters and actors than about ideas. Viewers seeking a coherent story or high production values should look elsewhere. But postmodern cineastes with an interest in the subject matter should take a look at the messier, less socially redeeming side of New Queer Cinema.