'Choking Man' a breath of fresh air

  Here's a film that takes an entirely fresh approach to storytelling - you might say a music video approach.

  "Choking Man" is written and directed by possibly the king of the MTV video, an Irishman named Steve Barron, with such classic credits to his name as Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing."

  The film will be shown tonight (Thursday) at 7 in the Historic Yuma Theatre, 254 S. Main St. The screening, part of The Sun Cinema Series, includes an independent short film and a hosted discussion. Language is English. Run time of the feature is 85 minutes; admission is $3.

  In Barron's words, "This film marks the first time in 15 years that I sat down with a blank page to write my own concept to direct, and the first time it wasn't for a music video."

  We might also note that this movie about a painfully shy Ecuadorian immigrant who washes dishes in a Queens, N.Y., diner, is a far cry from some of Barron's feature-film efforts, like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Coneheads."

  Still, there's that wonderful blend of magic and reality that we might expect from the creator of the famous 1985 video for the band Aha, in which a girl in a diner - coincidence? - gets sucked into the parallel universe of a charcoal drawing.

  Jorge spends his whole life hiding either in his shabby apartment or in the shadows of his hooded sweatshirt. Similarly, his existence is dominated by two sinister Big Brother figures: a psychologically bullying roommate and the ever-present restaurant poster that demonstrates the Heimlich maneuver for saving choking victims.

  There's room for all kinds, you might say, especially in the Jamaica area of Queens, near JFK Airport, where it is said that the highest concentration of languages in the world are spoken - more than 140 by one count. One co-worker even quips, somewhat maliciously, that Jorge's complete silence is a language all its own.

  Jorge silently observes the soap opera lives of the diner staff from his dim corner, where he rinses blobs of catsup into the metal sink. There's the Greek owner, played by Mandy Patinkin from "The Princess Bride" ("You killed my father, prepare to die!") and his stoic wife, who spends the day counting cash-register receipts.

  Then there's Teri, a flaky waitress who's been around the block a few times. Teri has an especially antagonistic relationship with one of the cooks, who works with a cell phone pinned between his shoulder and his ear. And let's not forget the humorless German, a regular customer who adds colored sprinkles to everything, even his soup.

  More prominently, there's Jerry the busboy - an obnoxious ex-dealer who can't resist making Jorge the butt of his sarcastic humor. Finally, there's Amy, a young Chinese waitress, who brings new life to the place when she's hired on.

  The fact that both Jerry and Jorge have their own version of a crush on Amy, however, will supply a growing tension within the close confines of the eatery.

  If you think it would be hard to build an interesting story around a character who barely speaks and whose whole existence moves dreamily from apartment to subway to work, think again. Jorge regularly slips into lively reveries that include dancing girls, Christian icons and a rather indecisive bunny.

  Like the bunny, Jorge periodically darts out the back door of the diner and crawls through a hole in the chain-link fence to huddle under a tangle of bare branches and hide from Jerry's taunting.

  There's also a surprising amount of excitement going on back at the apartment, where the roommate sits and watches violent Third World dramas and tries to incite the passive Jorge to action. "Make her feel something," says the disembodied voice.

  To counteract this demonic figure that dominates his dreams, Jorge frequents the local Catholic church, where the priest has spotted him as an accident waiting to happen. Still, something is going to give.