Marfa Girl

Eh. Kinda interesting. Some good writing. Some good scenes. Some interesting. Some not so interesting. Classic Larry Clark themes done well.

It's clear this movie basically does what it wants - which is fine by me. But y'know, that doesn't always makes for the best film or sometimes it does. The acting in places is very naturalistic, in others forced but overall it creates a good feel for the town and it's people. I guess this is what it was going for so well done.

I don't think this has the lasting impression KEN PARK had on me but it has graphic sex, teenagers talking about sex, skateboarding, smoking weed. Who am I to complain? Clark, at this point, just makes art and I just watched it. It feels stupid even rating it or writing this review.

Well done LC keep up the good work.

Back in the late 90s and early 2000's Larry Clark came out with some movie that ventured between good and great, but no matter the quality they were always at least interesting. Kids was spectacular and Bully for all it's leering overkill was at least an interesting study of youth gone horribly horribly wrong. Here we have Marfa Girl a loose assortment of sex scene as directionless as it's teen protagonist tied only very loosely together by a shoe-horned in generic evil white guy sex fiend. Even this thin subplot doesn't quite hang together, let alone support the surrounding sex scenes. No character in this movie is even remotely likable. Everyone comes off as shallow and following a set of directives unnatural to human interaction. The movie even starts on a dud. Clark has always been about using non-actors in his movies and usually it works out well, or at least well enough. At the beginning of the movie is a contrived scene with a teacher who's line readings are so bad you wonder if there's an off camera man with a gun pointed at her. What follows is an aimless 100 minutes in which even the sight of naked girls becomes tedious. With a mid movie break to hear the idiotic philosophies of the titular Marfa Girl. Can a person be that stupid? Can people pass the age of 14 really believe such utopian garbage? Nobody with half a brain should take this moron seriously. Then there is the aforementioned generic evil white man with a secret. Why is it that movies never seem to find that cliche or sterotype tiresome. I think I have an answer. Larry Clark really just needs to admit to himself that he would like to direct pornographic movies starring the youngest actors and actresses the law will allow and never waste our time pretending he's a director with anything to say about anything.

After our mind blowing experiences with Bully and Ken Park I was expecting something much better than Marfa Girl could deliver. It seems that Larry Clark has taken the old 20th. Century criticisms of Ken Park to heart and toned down his productions to a level of mechanized banality. And the result simply doesn't work.

The central characters are a community of Spanish Americans living somewhere in the deep south west who are driven to a point of madness by the mindless tedium of their existence. Adam is 16 and hangs around with a group of talentless drop out musicians and artists who spend their days drug taking, fornicating and banging instruments. The local policeman is a psycho maniac who gets turned on by pain whilst Adam's mother searches for cosmic vibes with pet birds and sound mediums.

So far so good. But I'm afraid that's all there is. The plot is virtually non existent, the acting is labored and the dialog is almost incoherent. Of course, as with all Larry Clark films, the cast were all able to shed their clothes and copulate in front of the crew. We are treated to six young male naked backsides pounding up and down so convincingly that I doubt it was simulated. Larry Clark certainly had a good time watching their convulsions but this time he doesn't share it with the audience. Unlike Ken Park there is no shocking full on ejaculation to trade mark the production with crystal realism. In fact there isn't even an erect male full frontal to express the degradation of it all. All such visible stirrings are this time kept firmly within the lad's boxer shorts. So Larry Clark has finally descended into Hollywoodesque coyness with all the well ploughed banality and tedium that oh so common genre forces upon us. Yawn.

Had potential, but squanders it.

A movie set in a small Texas town, near the border with Mexico. Follows a few characters in their dull, everyday lives, and how they are all affected by the presence of the Border Patrol.

The movie had heaps of potential, especially with regard to the issue of illegal immigration in the US. How this affects race relations, especially with Hispanic people, was also a great possibility.

However, while it touches on these issues, there is no real, or at least thoughtful, examination. The movie might as well have been set in the middle of the US in an all-white community it was so superficial.

The setting is really just a vehicle for a random, pointless plot (and I use the word "plot" very broadly here). The conclusion is quite impactful, but it almost doesn't have a context, what goes before is so unfocused.

Many of the scenes are there just for shock value, but you expect nothing less from writer-director Larry Clark (director of Kids, Bully and Ken Park).

Dialogue often consists of long monologues, telling some tale of personal woe but with no real context, interspersed with simplistic, pop, cereal-box philosophy. It often feels like you're watching someone being interviewed for a documentary, especially when that someone doesn't really want to be there.

Throw in performances that vary from OK to utter rubbish and you have an incredibly poor movie. Some of the performances are among the worst I have ever seen in a movie (and I've seen some of Kristen Stewart's movies...). Lindsay Jones as the teacher is mind-bogglingly bad.

Avoid.

Larry Clark the director of this flick became notorious for a few reasons. He is known to use non-actors in his flick. For most parts he did. He just picked up teenagers from the street and let them act in his flicks. But what the teenagers had to do was shocking for some. His first flick Kids (1995) made in full grunge bloom he let kids under-aged smoke cigarettes. It shocked the world back then but it put his name on the map. From there on he made the still unreleased flick in the US, Ken Park (2002). Again teenager were picked from the street to perform sexual acts on-camera. Teenage Caveman (2002) was another perfect example.

Always the theme in his flicks are youth skating around and bore themselves a lot. It shows in this picture that not all is the American dream. This flick takes place on borderland. You know what you will get, the typical Romeo And Juliette situations. But here Larry Clark goes a bit further. Were he wasn't afraid to show naked breasts from teenagers (always above 18) here in Marfa Girl I was surprised that they go all the way this time with even boner shots. It's all just on the edge of getting in trouble as filmmaker but he still does it and was never sentenced or whatsoever.

Of course the border patrol has the annoying cop who never got laid with the ones crossing the border and he's out to catch some chica available for his needs. You can see it coming that it turns out wrong. It's just a depressive flick were teenagers are doing it with each other because there's nothing else to do...

This isn't a flick for everybody due a lot of blah blah going on and some music being made by the teenagers also going on for ever and of course the nudity shown. Were Ken Park did had a good story here it hasn't. But it's out there if you want to see were Larry is famous for.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 0/5 Story 0/5 Comedy 0/5