Treasure Island: psychological thriller. Starring Lance Baker, Nick Offerman, Jonah Blechman & Pat Healy.  Written and photographed by Scott King. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

I wish I could be kinder to such an ambitious and unusual film as Treasure Island a surreal and beautifully photographed send-up of 1940s spy movies, but writer and cinematographer Scott King, along the rest of the crew (there is no credited director) does not make it easy.

The conceit driving the film is attractive enough. On the surface, it attempts to recreate a night out at the movies circa 1945 when World War II was ending and the country was in a mostly celebratory mood. It opens with a chapter from a cheesy serial involving Nazi spies, them moves on to newsreel footage, some of it real, some of it contrived and then we move go into the feature.

The feature section of the film is based on the legendary WWII case of “The Man Who Never Was” where two British Counter-Intelligence spies dressed up a corpse, stuffed misleading intelligence reports in its pockets and dumped it in the Mediterranean for the Italians to find. The Italians passed the papers on to Hitler who in turn was duped into changing his war plans.

But rather then retell that tale, Scott King seeks to examine the story from an entirely different light. He transplants the action to San Francisco’s Treasure Island (which was a military base back then), and introduces what appears to be two gung ho American intelligence officers Frank (Lance Baker) and Samuel (Nick Offerman). They’re attempting the same kind of intelligence operation as the British, but in this case trying to fool the Japanese concerning Allied invasion plans.

These two spies have secrets of their own.  Frank is a bigamist with one wife, a Japanese-American woman (Suzy Nakamura) who hides out in Chinatown to elude deportment by the government; a second wife, Anna, (Rachel Singer) a psoriasis sufferer, so ashamed of her condition, she stays indoors. And a third woman, Stella (Stephanie Ittleson), whom he tries to persuade to become wife number three (Stella and Ann look somewhat alike, which muddies the waters even further).

Samuel is loyal to his wife, Penny (Daisy Hall) but has problems of his own. Both of them are passionate swingers.  Every week they roam the bars and alleys of the city, picking up male strangers to bring home for some three-way play. What’s most disturbing to Samuel is he finds the men they play with to be attractive, but is unable to face up to his own bisexuality.

And then there’s that corpse (Jonah Blechman). In giving the corpse a new identity, the two spies use it as a palimpsest for both their own ideas of both their public and private selves. Soon, the corpse comes back to life to insist on its right to its own identity (there is also the question, clumsily dealt with, as to where it came from in the first place. The plot in general is not handled well at all).

It sounds wonderful on paper: a potentially heady, gripping yarn of suspense, blackmail and counter blackmail. It might have turned into an excellent thriller with underlying sub-themes about gender, racism, class and identity and how perhaps people back then were no less kinky and strange than they are now.

Unfortunately, it’s a bloodless, vague and confusing movie that pushes those very ideas to the forefront and its intriguing story to the back.  Treasure Island is filled with so many ideas about gender and society that it has no drama and no soul.   In the manner of many avant-garde films, it rates ideas above narrative. It falls into the false dichotomy of message versus storytelling, forgetting that the best genre films kept their themes playing under the surface, while telling a ripping good yarn.   In Treasure Island both Frank and Samuel become props for the movie to impose its own ideas, much like the spies impose their identities on the corpse. After awhile, the film seems so pleased with its daring deconstruction it becomes boring and disappears into its own head. 

The movie has an affected highbrow post-modern cachet about it (it won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival), but makes little of its dramatic potential.  While it’s look is right out of David Lynch, its attitude of chilly disdain somewhat puts me in mind of Kubrick. That’s a comparison the filmmakers might regard as a compliment, but the film is too superior about itself to reach much beyond the circle of coffeehouse intellectuals, who may like this exercise of all head and no heart. It does what no movie should do: it scorns the Pleasure Principle and so bores the audience.

That leaves the look of the film to talk about and in that Treasure Island succeeds admirably.  King and Company have done a fine job of recreating the crowded, murky low-budget Noir atmosphere of many of the B-films of the1940s, right down to the blurry soundtrack and Chris Anderson’s haunting, eerie score.