Turning

These women - performance artists, models, butch lesbians and transsexuals - expose their unique beauty under close scrutiny, and rather than simply chronicling a concert, Atlas incorporates candid interviews and playful banter to define his picturesque subjects.

The 13 women, all born or made New Yorkers -- all born or made women -- of various ages, shapes, sizes and backgrounds, lose none of their mystique by being captured "behind the scenes," traipsing through airports or meticulously applying weird makeup. Rather, they reveal themselves as more conscious, integral parts of a spectacle that unfolds to hypnotic effect.

As a whole and in conjunction with the concert snippets, they give an impressionistic glimpse of a performance and the people behind who forge it, no matter how often Atlas's glib multiple-exposure visual concoctions threaten to get in the way.

A must-see for fans of the cult musician and a moving, if sometimes oblique, look at gender-identity issues, it will find many admirers in niche bookings.

Onstage the Johnsons perform Mr. Hegarty's agreeably lush, intimate and often melancholy piano-based songs, accompanied by a string section.