The Pitfalls of Faith: 'Mister Lonely'

YOUNG FILMMAKER AND screenwriter Harmony Korine has established himself as a grunge visionary with his films "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy." Cherished by art-house audiences but often leaving critics aghast, Korine's work has set itself up as antithetical to traditional notions of cinematic pleasure: pretty people, happy endings, moral redemption, plot.

It's a shame if audiences reject Korine's latest film out of hand on the assumption that it's as gristly a chew as "Gummo." "Mister Lonely" stars Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator hardly getting by in Paris. He meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) who tells him about a commune for their kind in the wilds of Scotland, where people who "live as," as the script delicately puts it, the famous can be free.

In between, a group of nuns in the South American jungle, under the tutelage of Werner Herzog — bear with us — attempt to jump out of airplanes, aloft on faith alone.

Korine found the image in his mind and it stayed. "I liked the image," he says. "I thought it was a test of faith."

Despite the potential maudlin quality of the premise, the script's humor — and there is plenty of it — never comes at the expense of the characters. "It's because I love them. I think they're all beautiful," Korine says. "Their hearts are full. I think they do funny things; they do things that are strange and otherworldly."

The entire experience of witnessing the film in all its cracked nobility is otherworldly, a sensation Korine is aiming for. The spectrum of what's available from Hollywood, he notes, leaves plenty of room for fancies and even follies.

"I kind of always wanted to make movies that you couldn't just talk about," he says. "I know there are people who watch my movies and get nothing from them; I understand that. But I make films that I want to be something more — more felt than explained. The real world but slightly tweaked."

Audience members must take a Harmony Korine film on faith. "They're bringing the world of entertainment to the people," he says of his Jackson, Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, Abraham Lincoln and other impersonators. "In the same way, these nuns believe that if they believe enough they'll survive."

» Landmark E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri.; 202- 452-7672. (Metro Center)

Courtesy IFC Films