Set during the course of one long night in Manhattan, stretched an extra hour by the switch from daylight-savings to standard time, Jon Shear's searing Urbania takes place in a palpably menacing terrain similar to Martin Scorsese's noir-inflected Taxi Driver and After Hours. Also like Scorsese's films, it deals with the alienation of living alone in the big city, and more specifically, the alienation and physical danger that accompany homosexual desire. Released at a time when gay cinema too often strains to make itself palatable to straight audiences, Urbania deals with the perils of homophobia without compromise. In an extraordinarily controlled and nuanced performance, Dan Futterman plays an embittered man grappling with the loss of longtime companion Matt Keeslar. Relayed in a fractured, disorienting style—Shear counts Atom Egoyan's Exotica as a primary influence—the evening unfolds with numerous flashbacks, triggered by sights and sounds that force him to confront the past. The less said about Urbania's plot, the better, because Futterman's motivations are deliberately muddied, a ploy that seems gimmicky until the tense and emotionally cathartic conclusion, which feeds off the ambiguity. Shot in grainy, saturated Super 16mm, Urbania uses noir atmospherics to suggest a world in which homosexuality can only exist in the shadows, never stepping into the light of day. In one darkly comic scene, Futterman turns the tables by attacking his libidinous straight neighbors for constantly flaunting their lifestyle choices. Shear's only major misstep is his decision to trump up the action with urban legends, a phony device that fortunately tapers off as the film progresses. What remains is a powerful, uncompromising, and fiercely independent statement about both the homophobia embedded in American culture and the harrowing end of its effects.