S & M: SHORT AND MALE
Directed by Howard Goldberg. (STC) 86 min. Opens May 16.
Dully conventional technique exacerbates the shortcomings of this would-be crowd-pleaser about heightism, which premiered in Toronto last month at Hot Docs and now scores a theatrical release. Montreal-based filmmaker Howard Goldberg’s concerns about the indignities suffered by diminutive males are not entirely without merit, but he hasn’t shaped the material carefully enough. The film feels like a series of tangents spackled together by a cloying musical score rather than a well-argued social critique.
Goldberg spends far too much time on the predictable personal gripes of the North American interviewees, including a stand-up comic so tersely unfunny that he suggests a Mr. Show character. Most of the avenues of inquiry yield dead ends (i.e., personal anecdotes that prove meaningful only to the tellers), but an investigation into height-based hiring practices in China (imagine Randy Newman lyrics written into law) and the growing demand for limb-lengthening surgery exerts some real pull. Perhaps this is because it’s the only section of the film unencumbered by cutesiness — by the time Goldberg is reduced to a glossy shopping montage, it’s clear that he might have been better off making S & M as a short subject.