Nigel Finch was shaping up to be an important director of gay-themed films when he died of AIDS while editing this, his first feature. Previously a director with the BBC, he helmed the outstanding The Lost Language of Cranes in 1992 and Stonewall, though it isn't perfect, is a heartfelt and affecting film.

La Miranda (Guillermo Díaz) is a cross-dressing hooker who hangs out at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in New York that is regularly raided by cops. It's the late 1960s, and a whole bunch of archaic laws prevent queers from fraternising, dancing together, or wearing clothes not appropriate to their biological gender. Bolshy country boy Matty Dean (gorgeous Frederick Weller) arrives in New York to change the world, and becomes La Miranda's friend and casual lover after he stands with her one night against the police. Bostonia (Duane Boutte) is a drag queen den mother involved with a mafia man Vinnie (Bruce MacVittie) who wants her to have a sex change so they can take their relationship public. As tensions grow, Judy Garland enters the last days of her life, and the Stonewall riots, often marked as the beginning of the modern gay movement, approach.

There's one too many stories in Stonewall, and though we get a colorful - possibly inaccurate - sense of the late 1960s gay scene in New York the main characters are tantalising and well acted, and it's a shame that the film couldn't have concentrated more on just one or two of them. Finch's experience as a director of television mini-series' shows: this would have been a great two-parter. As it is, there's just too much whipping about between stories that need more screen time. The whole movie could have covered Vinnie and Bostonia, for example, and La Miranda, despite being the narrator, never really comes into focus. We certainly could have seen more of Matty Dean, a fascinating character played with panache by the handsome, well-built Weller. Matty's like Billy Joe, of Ode To fame, come to his senses and fired up with the quest for social justice. His sexual ambiguity, which sees him flip-flop between relationships with flamboyant La Miranda and a conservative gay activist, goes observed but unexplored.

As in Cranes, Finch includes substantial comment on the inner shortcomings of gay experiences, and tries to locate such experiences along a human plane. But the calm, introspective Cranes allowed this commentary to be heard. The raucous goings-on at the Stonewall Inn obscure it. I'm really not sure why we have to keep returning to drag shows, performed directly to the camera to sixties doo-wop tunes that do nothing for me. Stonewall isn't a musical - though the material would yield a good musical - and given its need for sharper editing, these interludes are a waste of this film's time.

The Stonewall legend never really knows what to do with itself - we know that drag queens led the riots, but conservative gay activists are always happy to insert their own ancestors into the record. Cultures grow and change, but one based on a uprising of cross-dressing prostitutes that now seems preoccupied with marriage and the military seems to have forgotten something of its origins. But it's a sweet myth and one that anchors gay culture in spirit and passion. Stonewall the film is also a loveable pot luck.