julien donkey-boy

Raw, epiphanic, hard to watch, Harmony Korine's 1997 film Gummo could not get a distribution deal. Most critics hated it. Gus Van Sant loved it. I saw it seven times.

Korine's second feature, another tale of life in a small town, is inferior but still shocking. The enfant terrible of indie cinema eschews a formal script and uses hand-held DV cameras and, for the most part, non-actors. Scottish actor Ewen Bremner gives a gorge-raising performance as the title schizophrenic who works at a school for the blind; Chloë Sevigny shines as Pearl, Julien's shy sister. A wooden Werner Herzog (cast in an apparent fit of cinematic nepotism) plays their sadistic, Robitussin-guzzling father. Korine's trademark obsessions are dutifully wheeled out: deformity (albinos, amputees), concupiscence (a masturbating nun, incest), and basic oddity (a magician who eats cigarettes). And apparently this is the first American Dogma 95 film, photographed and edited by two Danes who worked on The Celebration and Mifune. Despite such lofty ambition, the film is indulgently slop-op, as if proclaiming, "See how the fragmented mise-en-scène mirrors the protagonist's mental state." Innovative? I saw that on St. Elsewhere years ago.

-- Peg Aloi