Two new biopics on gay American authors Paul Bowles and Paul Monette explore their lives. Adéle Witchell finds out whether they're worthwhile.

Two new documentaries on gay US authors Paul Bowles and Paul Monette display opposite angles on the doctrines of autobiography. Both writers shared upright, comfortable upbringings yet, they handle gay style with dissimilar agendas.

So do their admiring biographers, who profile their subjects with very different tactics.

Jennifer Baichwal, the rhetorically adventurous director of "Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles," edited very lifelike scenes of Moroccan street life, desert vistas and archival footage with the words of the way out novelist, who published "The Sheltering Sky" in 1949.

Instead of dutifully illustrating the interviews and readings, Baichwal improvises on the verbal imagery with a daring eye of her own. When Bowles observes, "I was preoccupied with violence, violence in my imagination," Baichwal cuts to a barber wielding a straight razor.

By contrast, Monte Bramer uses a far less original, overly familiar means in "Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End," a profile of the author of "Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir and Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story".

His words "I'd rather be remembered for loving well than for writing well" almost undo the impact of Bramer's project. Dwelling on an author's love tends to take one away from the value of his books.

Bramer's lusterless documentary may feel a little redundant when one considers just how much Monette revealed of himself in print. After coming out of the closet, Monette turned radical - caring for his two AIDS-stricken lovers before he, too, died of the disease. He once said, "When I read a book and there is no AIDS in it at all, it's just amazing to me, because AIDS is all around me."

The documentary is a sensitive memorial, but much of his sampled prose is not remarkable. Home videos showing Monette's world travels are only sentimental.

Monette and Bowles belong to different generations and genres of gay writing, and Baichwal and Bramer diverge as biographers except for one nagging detail: Neither of the documentaries explain how these guys managed to pay their bills.

an Electronic Mail & Guardian publication

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