Take a Chance On Strange Frame--a Different Kind of Love Story

Have you ever watched a movie that instantly grabbed you with trippy visuals, took you away to a wonderfully filthy dystopian future, while delivering a romantic lesbian love story, all told to the beat of wild irreverent jazz music.

That's Strange Frame: Love and Sax.

I was drawn to this movie by its reviews. The thing that struck me as so odd about each of the reviews I read, was that they all talked about the movies vibrant colors, and it's touching story, but very few of them offered any real details on the story.

Many of the reviewers compared it to Heavy Metal, Barbarella and Blade Runner, but none of them dropped any of the actual story hints. It was like a riddle I had to figure out. But what makes this even more bizarre, is after seeing the movie, I can't begin to describe it.

It's a science fiction lesbian love story, told in a form of animation called cutout animation. The two main characters fall in love during street riots, as people who have been forced into slavery are attempting to rise up. One of the characters is a simple street musician, and the other is a miner, who's lungs were expanded to allow her to work in the mines for longer periods of time.

It's this genetic alteration that allows her to sing with an amazing bravado, and the two form the next big thing in music. But The Man, so to speak, sees them as property to be used.

This is no Disney movie. It's off-beat, covers taboo subjects and uses an animation style all its own.

The creators of this movie were forward thinking. They considered that in the future, race, religion, sex would all blend together, into a vibrant rainbow of colors. Each person could, and possibly would, be a new breed of human being.

The idea of us, and them, would fall by the way-side, as human beings would come together as just a hodge-podge of all different colors that didn't match, and didn't need to. And industrialization would push genetic engineering over the edge.

So, the film was created by G.B. Hajim, a film student living in rural Hawaii, and Shelley Doty, a Jazz guitarist. The film was originally meant to be a series on MTV, but was dropped. So, Hajim made it a local project.

Many of the residents of Hawaii live below the poverty line, so Hajim decided to bring on high school and college students from the area, teach them to draw, and create an original development team. They drew over 8,000 sheets of paper to be animated, and educated hundreds of young Hawaiian residents in the craft of animation.

The story is loaded with Hajim's experiences of poverty, lower class abuses, a cultural melting pot, and people scraping out a living with whatever means they had--all put to the oozing jazzy beats inspired by the other writer, Doty.

It's not the typical sci-fi film loaded with space battles and gun fights. It's more Earthy, even though it doesn't happen on Earth. And it doesn't stick to any of the themes that most sci-fi goers seek out, but I can guarantee, it is a captivating experience.

If you're willing to take a chance on something unusual, why not watch Strange Frame: Love and Sax. If nothing else, you can at least say you've tried something different.

If you wanted some powerful ladies, surreal story lines and music (it's all about the music, man), here are some more movies to try.