SCREENING ROOM
Odyssey of drugs and denial
Poetic, stylish "Tweek City" debuts Sunday at the Dances With Films Festival.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

Eric G. Johnson's "Tweek City," which has its premiere Sunday at the Monica 4-Plex as part of the Dances With Films Festival, is a double-whammy discovery — for writer-producer-director Johnson and for his star, Giuseppe Andrews. It is a harrowing yet illuminating odyssey driven by an impassioned, confident filmmaker and a young actor of equal resources and daring.

Although not autobiographical, the film draws upon a dark period in Johnson's life, which gives it a sense of being told by someone who's been there and done that.

Andrews' Bill is a charismatic San Francisco drug dealer who spirals downward on crystal meth over a period of several days. He takes drugs to blot out nightmares of a troubled childhood, which only intensifies his paranoia, his denial of his half-Latino heritage and his homophobia, which may mask a latent homosexuality. Johnson and cinematographer Barry Stone employ various types of cameras, film and tape, and add stylistic flourishes that express Bill's quicksilver shifts of mood and temperament in a manner that is darkly vital and poetic.