GUMMO |
| INTRODUCTION: The directorial debut of "Kids" scribe Korrine takes us back
to the surreal world of small town America, an area we have come to know all too well over
the last couple of months. SYNOPSIS: Gummo was the Marx brother who never appeared in a movie. He still hasn't, he is not in this movie, nor is any mention made of him. What we get instead is the loosely intertwined tales of the young inhabitants of Xena, Ohio, a small mid-western town still recovering from a devastating tornado. Teenage girls Dot and Helen look for love, Bunny Boy looks for acceptance and Tummler and Solomon look for cats to sell to the local Chinese restaurant. REVIEW: Sound intriguing? Well it isn't. The three tales are interspersed with pseudo-documentary style anecdotes from various albinos, midgets, mentally handicapped and socially inept 'friends' Korrine knew from the neighbourhood, taking the whole thing so far down the Freak Show path that it reeks of exploitation. "Even the most mundane things, like watching a fat woman eating a taco, I can make dramatic" says Korrine. Unfortunately he's lying and it turns out to be as dull as watching a fat woman eating a taco. Korrine himself puts in his requisite appearance as a sexually ambiguous drunk, presumably to evade criticisms of exploitation, but then ruins the effect by trying to get off with the midget. The amateur cast do the best with what they're given. "Witty dialogue is boring to me" says Korrine. Well boring dialogue is boring to every one else, yet that is precisely what he supplies. Sewell is strangely compelling as Bunny Boy, Sutton and Reynolds are easily up to the job of portraying Tummler and Solomon, but Sevigny and Glucksman never really click as Dot and Helen. No fault of theirs, they are by far the weakest written of Korrine's projections. Where do you go after writing one of the most controversial films of last Year? Straight down the pan it would appear. There is some latent talent evident here but it is difficult to tell where it lays as it is so far buried under the immature shock tactics of swearing, nudity and cat killings that pervade this piece. Don't get me wrong I've got nothing against swearing and nudity, but when performed by pubescent kids it seems to be little more than the attention-grabbing antics of a childish director. As for the cat killings well I must protest. Cat chasing is fine, it's instinctual fun for a Mutt like me, but the vast variety of cat deaths on display here seem to serve little purpose. Then again, at a dollar a lb. for cat meat, where is the Cheshire Cat? The tornado has wiped away all forms of authority, the school has been destroyed, everyone's fathers have been killed, and the kids are freed, in this pre-Oedipal wonderland. Well Korrine has a lot of growing up to do before he will be allowed to darken my cinema-going experience again. He describes his style as mistakist, I describe it as mistaken. One to avoid at all costs. Mutt's Rating: ! |