USA,
1995, 85 min
Shown in 1995
CREDITS
- dir
-
Gregg Araki
- prod
-
Gregg Araki, Andrea Aperling
- scr
-
Gregg Araki
- cam
-
Jim Fealy
- editor
-
Gregg Araki
- cast
-
James Duval, Rose McGowan, Jonathon Schaech
- prod co
-
Why Not Productions
-
COMMENTS
Gregg Araki in person.
OTHER
Gregg Araki’s first biggish-budget movie (it has a stunning, stylized look) is also his first “heterosexual” film, after four previous “Queer New Wave” films (Totally F***ed Up, SFFIF 1994). Homoerotic overtones abound, however, in the triangular relationship that develops between three beautiful, desensitized and otherwise screwed up youths. Amy Blue, a 17-year-old speed princess, her naive boyfriend Jordan White and a sexy drifter Xavier Red are forced to take to the road after Xavier inadvertently blows the head off a convenience store clerk during an impromptu hold-up. What follows is a hallucinogenic journey into a world of macabre violence and unbridled sexual games, as the enigmatic “X” leads Amy and Jordan deeper and deeper into trouble. The soundtrack (Nine Inch Nails, Porno for Pyros and many more) drives home the theme of lost innocence among an MTV-fed subculture with an in-your-face industrial spit. Several cameo roles (Heidi Fleiss, Margaret Cho, Skinny Puppy, among others) veer the narrative into a bizarre satire that feels like a media-induced nightmare. Araki never takes his foot off the accelerator in this ode to teenage angst—what he calls “The Alienated Teen Pic to End All Alienated Teen Pics—and, oh yeah, it’s a comedy and a love story, too.”
FACTOID #188
According to an item in the 1969 Halloween edition of the Hollywood Reporter, Swedish director Bo Widerberg cancelled a Festival tribute at the last minute with a cryptic telegram from Stockholm that read, ’Sorry impossible to come. Must stay in bed.’
