It sounds like a modern-day paradise: "A place where everyone's famous and no one ages. ... There's gonna be nowhere else like it on Earth."

In "Mister Lonely," that is how a Marilyn Monroe lookalike (Samantha Morton) describes a Scottish Highlands hideaway where people like her share a home and a lifestyle built around impersonation, illusion and a community that seems abnormal only to the outsiders.

They might look askance at a dinner table headed by the pope and counting such famous folks as Abe Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, Michael Jackson, Madonna, James Dean, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn and husband Charlie Chaplin (their daughter is Shirley Temple), the Three Stooges and a couple of others.

---

'Mister Lonely'

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

• Starring: Diego Luna, Samantha Morton.
• Rating: Not rated but adult in nature.
• Web site: misterlonely.co.uk

---

Impersonators all, of course, in Harmony Korine's dreamy but disjointed meditation on identity, individuality and celebrity obsession that is just a step removed from, say, a real cable show that gives ordinary people makeovers so they can play their favorite star for a day.

Most of the movie tells the story of a Mexican Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) -- all of the lookalikes use their celebrity names rather than their given ones -- who is living and performing in Paris as the story unfolds. He dresses, dances and sounds like Jackson, circa late 1980s, when he meets Marilyn from her 1955 "Seven Year Itch" period, billowing white halter dress and all.

She invites him to the impersonator sanctuary, where she rejoins her husband, Buster Keaton turned Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), and their daughter.

This allows Korine, writer of "Kids" and writer-director of "Gummo" and "Julien Donkey-Boy," to stage visually arresting scenes of Lincoln on a tractor or a pint-size Buckwheat scrubbing the pope's back in a tub out in the middle of a field.

Or, memorably, a talent show performance to the song "Cheek to Cheek," followed by the queen's declaration: "There's no truer souls than those souls who impersonate. For we live through others in order to keep the spirit of wonder alive."

But reality eventually pierces that spirit and the sense of the miraculous in a subplot -- involving a priest played by Werner Herzog and flying nuns who have nothing to do with Sister Bertrille -- that ends in an unexpected way.

Korine acknowledges they don't intersect in a formal way. "It's more in service of allegory and poetic punctuation," he says in the press notes, although both address faith and obsession. Nevertheless, as dazzling and daring as the subplot is, it feels undernourished and shoehorned in.

Luna, from "Y Tu Mama Tambien," and Morton, nominated for Academy Awards for "In America" and "Sweet and Lowdown," provide the heart of this movie as Michael and Marilyn. They're fragile souls who have taken refuge behind their respective masks, and the prospect of removing them is painful.

Michael says he was "born this way," and she cracks that she's been Marilyn since she got her breasts, but any examination of life before impersonation is neglected.

"Mister Lonely," which uses the haunting Bobby Vinton song of the same name and music by Jason Pierce aka J. Spaceman and the Sun City Girls (reviewed in last week's Post-Gazette), is no impersonator. Problems and all, it's unlike anything else out there today, which in this copycat world is something.