A New Week exploring queer cinema (MYSTERIOUS SKIN)

We arrive in what I consider to be the peak of Greg Araki’s filmogaphy. In Mysterious Skin style stays in the picture but the sensitivity of Araki’s first steps returns and really moves you, part because of the original story part because Araki for the first time films his heroes with love and tenderness, but still staying on the edge of what is filmable or not.

The story is divided in two characters.

The 8 year old Brad lackey in 1981 woke up having lost five hours of his life. For ten years he tries to discover what had happened during this time, being sure that he was abducted by aliens, while his father never really seems to care about the incident.

On the other side you have Neil McCormick who at the age of 8 was in love with his coach, who introduced him to his first sexual experiences, while his mother doesn’t really cares. 10 years later the openly gay Neil is still passionate about his coach and pushes his sexual experiences to the limit, while being unable to let any one near him.

Brad tries so hard to remember while Neil cannot forget, both lost in the tyrrany of their memories.

Araki chose to adapt for the screen Scott Heim’s first and critically and commercially successful novel, and that was a great thing. On one hand the novel’s dark material and the mind games that memory plays, allowed him to keep his imagery alive as in his previous movies, on the other hand the tight story never let the plot get lost into lynch-like mazes and out of the blue resolutions. It’s probably the first time that Araki actually like his characters, he feels for them and captures them.

He is also lucky to have such a talented cast to play Neil and Brad in the different ages, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt outstanding as the 18 year old Neil, followed by Brady Corbet (lately seen in the american version of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games). He also has a great supporting cast with Elizabeth Shue as Neil’s mother and the well-known in the indy films Bill Sage as the paedophile coach.

The subject of paederasty is always at the edge, even by mentioning or implying it. Araki dares to enter and create images of it and never becomes exploitive of the subject. He never treats the subject as an erotic situation, on the contrary his voluptuous camera, creates a thriller level suspense as you never know when is going to stop. Earnest and direct he slwly crates a tension that will not allow you to stop watching it. i saw it on video with my mother and despite the fact that she hated the subject and the gay scenes made her realy uncomfortable she desperately wanted to see the end of the story and what was next.

It was the first time that Araki actually embraced hsi story and didn’t let his stylistic tendencies to control the movie. For the Araki fans his most complete film, even though not his most flamboyant. For the rest a great movie that you should have never missed, and deserved much more attention. For me unmissable and beyond its queer cinema label.

and a clip with Mylene Farmer’s sublime Redonne-Moi

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (NOWHERE)

Since we started the Greg Araki cycle I will go on from where Doom Generation left. Actually it leads to Nowhere. The plot is nearly undescribable but still let’s try to sum up what is going on in that film.

Nowhere chronicles 24 hours of some alienated Los Angeles teenagers. Despair, alienation, failing relationships and imagine the rest. Things are centered around 18-year-old Dark, an alienated UCLA film student, his bisexual African-American girlfriend Mel, her purple-haired, acid-tongued lesbian girlfriend Lucifer, Dark’s homosexual classmate Montgomery, and Montgomery’s poetess friend Alyssa. Into the set entera queer industrial rock star named Cowboy; his drug-addicted lover and band mate Bart, the local drug dealer Handjob, his live-in S&M girls Kris and Kozzy, the intellectual Dingbat and her older brother Duckey, the bulimic Egg, Alyssa’s self-destructive twin brother Shad and his girlfriend Lilith. Mel’s little brother Zero and his blond girlfriend Zoe, plus a Teen Idol so famous that no one needs to utter his name, a trio of Atari gang members, nattering Valley girls, scary drag queens, a pragmatic party, Logan from Baywatch and a mysterious alien from outer space that only Dark sees.

Confused, yes it’s normal, Araki actually takes the idea of Totally F***ed up and puts it on acid, combining it with visuals he tested in Doom Generation. If Totally F***ed up was portraying the Los Angels bored generation X and Doom Generation tried to be an ellegory of sexual discovery and self distruction, nowhere just throws evrything on you and leaves it up to you to find any meaning. I don’t know if Araki actually cared about plot, he just had the oportunity to create unique set-pieces and a series of events that you will never see in a mainstream movie.

The first half of themovie just passes by with people talking abou sex or doiong sex to prove that the new generation is so corrupted and in need of something to believe. First you realize that no matter how much you think about your sex life compared to the 1997 Araki generation you are the most conservative guy (girl) of the world. Kinky, homosexual, S/M, fetishes anything on your screen shot in a frenzy way that it’s more anxious than erotic. Slowly religion comes in as a result of lost morals and lost soul, as comes the invisible alien to kill all the sinners. Till the end you are in limbo of what you have been watching.

The film is also a who is who of the yound actors of the time. You get to have two beverly Hills stars Shanen Doherty and Kathleen Robertson, you have Married with Children Christine Applegate, you have a pre-American Beauty/Pie Mena Suvari, Heather Graham shagging Ryan Philippe, Rose McGowan, Baywatch’s Jaason Simmons, Chiarra Mastroianni, denise Richards in her first steps, some porn actors and the Araki casual connecting all this trilogy (Totally, Doom and this) James Duval. Sex is in the air and it’s funny to watch all of them playing characters so close to them or that they will never risk to play again, once the mainstream accepted them.

What is left in the end is a movie that you can love for it’s style and the visual valor but if you need a story you are doomed. Araki is out of control and probably lost, and his lynch-style story needed a lot more to be actually acceptable. Still his style, the music, the rythme save him from a complete turkey. He really shows that the american society no matter how much liberated wants to be, no matter I don;t care about manners, is always imprisoned of a conservatism that slowly wins over them. The masks of heterosexuality and comme-il-faut falls down each second of the movie.

The greatest thing about these Araki films is that they gave him the oportunity to get rid of all these stuff and later show an emotional side that we have almost forgot. if you want to see it the whole film is on you tube in 9 parts.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (THE DOOM GENERATION)

For some strange reason this was actually the movie that marked Greg Araki’s Style, despite the fact that it is only this and his following one (Nowhere) that actually adopted such extreme visuals and surrealism as a style.

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red, when they somehow save him from the attack of some homophobic gang. After a while they just throw him on the street, only to met him up later in a store. A murder takes place and the three of them flee together, bonded strongly after this common fate. The bisexual Xavier will make the two kids explore themselves and their limits, as the three of them will jump into a road trip into Hell, full of sex, perversion, fasists, talking heads (not the band), violence and godsend signs of the up coming apocalypse.

This is supposed to be an “Heterosexual film by Greg Araki” and I have to admit that in that way Araki tries to define the new face of the queer cinema. A cinema that doesn’t concentrate on portraying homosexual couples or kids. Quite the contrary it tries to present the complete scale of sexuality. Avoiding the simplicity of the boy-meet-girls or boy-meets-boy that actually conquers in the usual American filmography, Araki likesto explore the hidden secrets of his country and everything that you can consider abnormal.

And it’s true that during this trip to Hell (ok it’s America but the symbolisms here come and go like that) Amy, Jordan and the sexually charged Xavier meet so many people, and they live up to the next extreme. From a hunted trio they turn into the next Natural Born Killers, but here there is no political correctness to stop them. They drive, the fuck, they kill as long as Araki believes that there is another limit to cross.

When you talk about style here is the movie. The whole story is actually based on the visuals and the next extreme that the director-writer wants to explore. It’s true that the road movie formula, that explores America really gives him the right to present no matter how many peculiar cases he thinks of. After a while you even stop thinking about them being a bit too much. The whole film is out of the normal right from the start. If you are a fan of narrative cinema and you love analyzing the story, yo really are doomed here. You don’t have any chance of loving this.

Of course you cannot say that the film is a queer film in the typical sense. There is too much of Rose McGowan’s tits in the shots, homosexuality is nearly mentioned, no matter how hot you can consider Jonathan Schaech to be, or James Duval (though I have to admit Schaech look in his voyeristic scene is really something). Araki films all the three of them with passion and  makes sexuality to conquer  the air.

This film is about speed, frenzy rhythm, hysteria, nudity, exploration of sex. No actual characters, rare connection to reality, despite making an interesting allegory, that is to pushed to actually convince you. Style is the question here and that’s why most of people who loved Araki connect him with this movie. It’s really powerful and stays in your mind only for its visuals. But to tell you the truth I don’t think that these visuals and the eccentricities are actual what makes Araki’s films rally tick and 10 years after this 1995 film he proved me right. I think Araki is more sensitive and much better when he manages to control his appetite for stylish cinema. The hype never actually helped him, especially when the film sometimes is considered as another Trainspotting, another Kids or just a Rose McGowan vehicle. Too bad that most people connect Araki with this kind of movie.

 

A New Week exploring queer cinema (TOTALLY F***ED UP)

I was looking my list of movies and I realized the lack of a Greg Araki film. Araki, if you ask me, is in this category of directors that exists only thanks to movie geeks and queer cinema. His movies are rarely complete, his scenarios tend to be more and more incoherent and his surreal and sexually charged atmosphere is the only argument of defense.

Totally Fucked Up is Araki’s third film and the one that started his Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy (that also includes Doom Generation and Nowhere).

The film chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six Los Angeles gay adolescents who have formed a family unit and struggle to get along with each other and with life in the face of various major obstacles. With Andy his main center of attention we follow them as their parents kicked them out, they’re broke and bored, their lovers cheat on them, and they’re harassed by fag-bashers. If things are going to be this way, maybe suicide isn’t a bad idea; at least not in the mind of Andy, our major protagonist, who gives the film its title by describing himself as “totally fucked up.”

The movie is not on everyone’s taste. I can say that is rather boring in the way it tries to become the Godard of the queer generation X. people talking to the camera, a mocumentarish cinematography, the grain to show the poor media or the artistic style. Araki who had some serious issues himself tries to portray a generation that doesn’t know where it’s going. Neither does the director. He tries hard to be philosophical, he tries hard to keep the rhythm but he looses the battle. At the end what remains is a stylish, simple cinematography that never actually prepares you for the hyper-kinetic follow ups. What makes the film tick is the sensibility at it’s core, the need to show how life works. No matter how often the rhythm is lost, there is an episode that will atract your attention. Plus you meet James Duval, actually Araki’s alter ego, that you will see nearly in every film of his.

In total the movie is a must see, thanks to its status in the queer cinema genre. Araki is an interesting cinematographer that got too exploitive at a point, before coming back to his sensitive roots. Tottally F***ed up is the film at the edge of his early period with his grandiose one. Simple and truthful lacks the decoupage that could make it tick, but still remains a great documentation of the outcasts and a gay life that is neither partying all the time, neither I am sad because I am gay.

The big disadvantage of the film is that you cannot exclude it from its genre, you cannot see it outside of th queer movement, because then you stay with a mediocre film of good intentions and some stylish efforts that work at some points but never as a whole.