
No Skin Off My Ass. 1991. Canada. Directed by Bruce LaBruce. 73 min.
With LaBruce, Klaus von Brücker, G.B. Jones. Hailed by the critic Amy Taubin as “sweeter than Warhol, subtler than Kuchar, sexually more explicit than Van Sant,” LaBruce’s debut feature emerged during the efflorescence of queer cinema in the early 1990s. Shot in grainy Super-8, the picture centers around a hairdresser who falls for a handsome, taciturn skinhead, and their peculiar courtship is punctuated by memorable sequences with the skin’s sister, a lesbian underground filmmaker with plans to make a movie about the Symbionese Liberation Army. No Skin Off My Ass is like That Cold Day in the Park replayed as a punk rock daydream, yet here Robert Altman’s idiosyncratic thriller has become a lo-fi love story, featuring LaBruce as a swishy stand-in for Sandy Dennis. Now a homocore classic, No Skin is a complex exploration of how subculture is articulated through style, and a poignant study in erotic fascination.