Starring local actress Alix Smith in the titled role, this is the story of a jaded, tough-minded woman who spins stories for cash, a barstool Scheherazade whose tales flirt with pornography even as they ruminate on the nature of storytelling.

Philadelphia director Andrew Repasky McElhinney, who's barely old enough to drink now and was 17 when Magdalen was shot, loads the film with biographical allusions both blatant and inscrutable. Besides giving his protagonist his own last name, he makes an appearance-as himself-in a dream sequence where he discusses his bisexuality and his relationship with his father at length. If this all sounds tremendously indulgent, well, it is, but it's also fascinating. "A lot of people don't like you," Magdalen tells Andrew during their imagined meeting. "They think you're pretentious and you talk in clichés." An apt charge, actually, but it's not the whole story.

McElhinney seems to model himself after figures like Warhol or Godard, whose films make up only a part of the canvas that is their life. But a more accurate comparison might be to Ed Wood, the no-budget monster movie wizard whose technically abysmal films are redeemed by the genuine-if cracked-vision which animates them.

Magdalen isn't exactly a good movie, but I'll be damned if I've ever seen anything like it.