Hedwig becomes consumed with finding the other half of his innermost self -- the part of himself that has somehow gone missing or, worse, has been stolen. His existential angst is a suitable excuse on which to hang songs, and it's also a rich playground for both Hedwig as a performer and Mitchell as an actor. Mitchell's Hedwig, with his bitten-fruit lips, assortment of glamorous stripper wigs and wardrobe of trashy-fishnet finery, earns both our sympathy and our frustration as he muddles his way through his identity crisis. We see him hurting the people around him, like the biker-masculine Yitzhak, his bandmate and lover (played with the right mix of poignance and humor by Miriam Shor), who harbors a secret desire to be Hedwig.

Mitchell plays all the stock angles of femininity that every drag queen worth his salt has to: He's pouty, petulant and possessive, always the diva. But he also lets us behind the false eyelashes. There's a massive shot of theatricality in his über-feminine Hedwig -- he's scoldingly funny when he bitches out a bandmate for throwing one of his bras in the dryer -- but his fragility pulses beneath the surface in waves. You feel something for him even when, at his invitation, you're laughing at him.

The movie is a bit jerkily paced in places. But Mitchell has managed to make a movie that captures the essence of the stage show even as it stands comfortably on its own. (It also benefits from some superb animation sequences by Emily Hubley, daughter of famed experimental animators John and Faith Hubley.) The story's conclusion isn't as cut and dried (if you'll pardon the pun) as some viewers might like it to be; its intentional ambiguity might seem like a copout if you're looking for a bigger payoff.

But if you can accept that Hedwig simply finds a way to live with himself, "Hedwig" makes as much sense as it has to. The music -- written by Trask -- and the way Hedwig performs it are the sexual and sensual backbone of the picture. There's not much gloriousness in the movies these days -- not many moments that deliver true spectacle, that make you realize you've stopped breathing for a few seconds. I had a few of those moments in "Hedwig," all of them during musical numbers.

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"Hedwig" is aggressively, winkingly glam. It helps to have a taste for T. Rex, Iggy and the like, but you should feel free to check reverence at the door: Trask's songs are enjoyable as both sendup and tribute. Sometimes their drama is almost inextricable from their knowing sensibility, as in the ballad "The Origin of Love," where Mitchell's "Velvet Goldmine" crooning explains how men and women became divided from a single being in the first place. It's a little corny, but it still sounds damn good. And the sight of Hedwig and his band transforming a trashy trailer into a glitter-rock stage during "Wig in a Box" was so exhilarating I almost leapt out of my seat. The movie is pure theater, as it should be.

Lester Bangs once described the experience of seeing Elvis Presley in person as having an erection of the heart. High on its own pulpy, sleazy glamour, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is nowhere near Elvis caliber. It's just not that kind of art -- its alert self-awareness and twinkling self-mockery are too high. But it does capture one angle of Bangs' meaning. You can be hard in a dress, or soft in a pair of leather trousers. The blood flows to every extremity from one source: How fast it beats determines how hard it rocks, whether you're working with 1 inch or 6.

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