City Loop

Youth culture has never been so honestly represented. A world class film, with a delightful structural sensibility. Bravo to all involved, most especially the father/son team in the beat sequence, and congratulations to the writer for altering my life in a way that I know I shall never be able to fully explain.

I saw "city loop" at Toronto a couple of years ago and more recently on Cable here in Australia. The script is generally too smart by half and tries to be very sassy but the director just didn't pull it off.

It probably needed some flesh to be exposed for it to have any credibility as a teen flick of any worth. Nice try folks and it's a valiant effort for a low budget film but in the end you have to ask - WHY BOTHER?

I'm finding this very difficult to write. After a few false starts I realise how hard it is to properly convey the unusual badness of "City Loop". It's not that it's VERY bad - "insufferably bad" is the strongest phrase I'd use - but it is, unlike many bad things, INDISPUTABLY bad. Moreover (and this is a different thing again) I don't see how anyone could take pleasure in watching it.

It's a multi-story ensemble pic in which the stories aren't really stories (they're CALLED stories - "Dom's Story", "Misha's Story", etc., but nothing to speak of happens in them), and the ensemble consists entirely of characters I found it impossible, and I mean IMPOSSIBLE, to take any interest in. (What I wanted to happen was ALWAYS whatever would bring the film to a merciful end.) All characters are amoral and inarticulate, they all move through the world at random, none of them have redeeming qualities (few of them even have qualities). Chayko tries to swindle us into caring by leaving crucial matters unexplained (an excuse to make us watch some scenes TWICE, as if once weren't bad enough), but it doesn't work.

I haven't exhausted the film's weaknesses. Photography is unattractive - although I get the feeling it probably wasn't the cinematographer's fault; it feels rather as if Chayko took the poor man (or woman - I fled as soon as the credits began, so I wouldn't know) to some ugly, bare location, asked him to film the ugliest part of it, and then tied his (/her) hands by firing the lighting technician. The music is also pretty drab. The best thing going for it is the fact that, although it seems as though it will never end, it really doesn't last very long.

A group of teenage workers in Speedy's Anytime pizza delivery parlor have different evenings that intertwine with each other round work. However each are bored and a little disillusioned with their lives. The evening sees some dramatic events in their young lives.

I didn't have high hopes for this film – I assumed it was going to be the usual teen angst stuff set in Australia featuring a bunch of characters I could care less about. And in a way I was right, the basic plot(s) are the usual run of mill things. However the stories are quite cool and are aided by a clever quirk. Each characters story is told fully and separately (not original I know- but still effective), and they intertwine. This means we see events that happen later in other stories but they aren't explained till then.

The downside is that this is a gimmick and gets old before the film ends. The other downside is that the plots are sometimes too daft and other times too ponderous and navel-contemplating. This isn't helped by the characters being mostly selfish teenagers who think their lives are the be all and end all of everything. The actors don't help this much – they're OK, but they allow their roles to become stereotypes too easily. It has some comedy but mostly this is a teen drama that deals with things like `being a virgin', `cuming too early', `breaking up with girlfriend' etc etc.

Overall it passed the time. The story telling gimmick helped for the most part, but it started to drag before the end and wasn't much fun to watch. Teen angst dramas have been done much better than this.

Here in Belgium, City Loop was shown on the International Film Festival of Flanders, Ghent, but only a few people watched it. I was one of them, and I must say, I really enjoyed it. It was refreshing, original, especially in the way the story was told. It also had quite some funny bits, and the actors all succeeded in portraying real young people. I also liked the atmosphere that was created through the combination of night and the city, it was recognizable on one hand, and then again, so weird, so special. I would in fact like to know what city it was. I can't make any comparisons, because in fact, I have never seen a movie like this, and believe me, I have seen a lot of movies!