Raw Deal Review - The Miami Herald

'Raw Deal' is disturbing, utterly absorbing

BY RENE RODRIGUEZ
Posted on January 25, 2002

Everything you've heard about Raw Deal: A Question of Consent is true. The controversial documentary, about an alleged rape at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, made national news after its premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, due mostly to the explicit nature of video footage documenting the purported crime.

The footage is undeniably disturbing, both for the extent of the nudity it shows (no digital masking or blurs were used) as well as for the behavior of the participants (a man and a woman, both clearly inebriated, engaged in the kind of graphic sexual activity never shown in movie theaters, except for the kind frequented by Paul Reubens). The frankness of the material will make the movie difficult for some viewers to sit through: It leaves nothing to the imagination.

But director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman didn't include the unsettling footage for shock's sake. Instead, the footage is used as the crucial capper for the film's ingenious structure. Shaped like a court case, Raw Deal allows the participants involved to describe their version of the events of that night, then leaves you to draw your own conclusions by showing you exactly what transpired.

There's no debate about what happened earlier that evening. On Feb. 26, 1999, an exotic dancer named Lisa Gier King and another woman were hired by the Delta Chi fraternity at UF to perform during the frat's ''Big Brother/Little Brother'' pledge event. After the festivities, King accompanied the other dancer home, then returned to the fraternity, where she continued to drink and party with the guys, even taking a dip in the hot tub with them.

SUSPENSEFUL

From there, things start to get fuzzy -- and Raw Deal shrewdly jumps ahead to the following day, purposely keeping the rest of the night's events offstage until the very end, generating an effective aura of suspense. The next morning, King ran half-naked from the fraternity, claiming she had been raped by frat member Michael Yarhaus. Police swooped in, interrogated Yarhaus and others, and confiscated the videotape -- then turned around and arrested King, charging her with the false reporting of a crime. According to King's mother, a police officer told her that authorities had watched the tape and concluded that ''sexual battery did not occur'' and that King had wasted their time.

But did she really? One of the fascinating things about Raw Deal is how it illustrates that even in the face of cold, hard evidence, no two people are guaranteed to view things the same way. By giving equal screen time to King (a mother of two with a prostitution record), frat member Tony Marzullo (who was in the room with Yarhaus and King and even shot some of the video footage), their attorneys and other participants in the case, Raw Deal makes a convincing argument for both sides -- that King was in fact forced to have sex against her will, or that she incited the activity and later regretted it. The film keeps things so balanced, don't be surprised to find yourself changing your mind again and again, sometimes even from scene to scene, about whom to believe, at least until you finally see what actually took place. Even then, a clear-cut decision is not guaranteed.

Raw Deal also zooms in on the media circus that erupted around the case, revealing how the state attorney's office bungled the case (promising immunity, then rescinding it; jumping to conclusions before sufficient evidence had been collected), then hurriedly tried to make amends, which only aggravated the problem. It's an example of Florida government at its most disorganized.