CALENDAR, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Child-Abuse Case Jolts Family in "Jaundiced Eye"

BY BARBARA MAINGUY

Using cinéma vérite, interview footage, and recreation, filmmaker Nonny de la Peņa's The Jaundiced Eye is a subtly powerful look at the shadowed legal system through the event of two men wrongly accused of child abuse. The case, stemming from a custody battle, is bizarre: a five-year-old boy was allegedly forced to watch his father and grandfather have sex with each other. What could be a tabloid tale is made poignant by the son's dignified and articulate participation in the film, and by de la Peņa's skillful working of the story to provide rigorous, intelligent context for both sides, refusing on film to give way to the low rent spitefulness of the accusers, including the boy's mother and her new, openly homophobic boyfriend. (In the stepfather's single taped telephone interview, he insists, incorrectly, that "the whole family is gay.")

The film stays in the legal stream, and engages purely with the inexperience of the police, the carelessness of the defense lawyers, and the prejudiced stance taken by both at the outset, that ultimately forced a legally flimsy - some might say ludicrous - case to be tried, and won. De la Peņa's refusal to delve into the lurking prurience of the accusers psychology, beyond careful, superficial reflections, keeps the film at a philosophical level. Rather than clucking in disgust, we are forced to genuinely try to see the enormous complexity of the subjective interpretation required in a single case, and the lack of easy or obvious solutions. We are, though, left with a sense of terror about the current justice system, and a real deal of feeling for the powerlessness of its victims.