The Legend of Leigh Bowery

This absorbing 2002 documentary from filmmaker Charles Atlas concerns the life and times of Leigh Bowery, the Australian-born fashion designer whose work in 1980s London was far more about creating a new art form than haute couture. A hit during England's post-punk, New Romantics era, Bowery extended the expressive possibilities of fashion into something that resembled performance art, mixing gender-neutralizing bodysuits with enormous hats and startling masks to create costumes boasting a stirring primitivism with a surreal touch, made all the more strange because Bowery himself (who remains a bit of a mystery) was the model literally encased within these elaborate getups. Numerous interviewees, including Boy George, Damian Hirst, and Bella Freud (Bowery was a muse and model for British artist Lucian Freud), shed some light on many aspects of Bowery's colorful life (he died of AIDS-related complications in 1994), while archival footage is used to illustrate both the man and his times. Recommended. (T. Keogh)