Marfa Girl

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.

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

Six years is a long hiatus, especially since Larry Clark was popping movies out almost annually for a while. After that much of a break, you'd expect a filmmaker to come back with something new, engaged with different subjects. But then again, this is Larry Clark we're talking about. All of his work is a variation on a theme. "Marfa Girl" takes a few new turns even if it's firmly rooted in the director's obsessions.

The title is somewhat misleading. Yeah, the movie is set in Marfa, Texas. That's not the misleading part. Instead, the movie is actually about a boy, not a girl. Fifteen year old Adam, about to turn sixteen, is the protagonist. He skates, is in a band, occasionally enjoys a pot cigarette, is friends with a sexually liberated young mother, and is currently trying to get into his girlfriend's pants. His mom rehabilitates parrots and is heavily involved in the local spiritualist and art scene. She's friends with a twenty-something artist, the titular Marfa Girl, a young lady who believes in free love and equality of genders. Connecting all the story threads is Tom, a border patrol cop with sadomasochistic fantasies, misogynistic tendencies, and an unhealthy obsession with Adam and his mom.

"Marfa Girl" is edgier then "Wassup Rockers" but is still more gentle then the majority of the director's films. As you'd expect, the film is loosely plotted, rolling from one encounter to another. The pacing is relaxed, instead of belabored. Once again, Clark has successfully put us into these kids' lives. There's not much of a score and what is there is odd, chiptune music. The film is named after its setting because Marfa is a character onto itself. It's clear that the odd mixture of artists, spiritualists, disaffected kids, and border patrol cops that makes up the town was Clark's main inspiration. After watching the film, you feel like you know what a day in the sleepy town must feel like.

As is expected with Clark by this point, among the teenage sex scenes, drugs, and violence, are genuinely touching or intriguing moments. An early moment, when Adam's mom talks with a friend about loosing pets and reincarnation, really impressed me. Though the movie seems to implicitly suggest that the whole conversation is ridiculous, the emotion the moment sums up is true. Another stand-out moment is Adam and the Marfa Girl's discussion about sexism and double standards. This leads to an encounter with two Mexican border patrol cops, starting a heated conversation. Clark continues to do intimate conversation well. The Girl has a revealing conversation with the mellower of the two cops, about his military history. An earlier date with another artist is charmingly awkward. Even the villainous Tom gets a revealing monologue near the end. Surprisingly, the sex scenes, only a few of which involve teenagers, have a gentle, romantic tone to them, making this, perhaps, Clark's first legitimately erotic film.

Adam is your standard Clark protagonist: Obsessed with sex with no clear direction in life. His sweet relationship with his Mom makes him different though. Adam Mediano has a natural charisma as an actor and it's not impossible to see him going on to a real acting career. Drake Burnette as the titular character does very well, being spunky and lovable. She can't make all her heavy dialogue work but the actress is still likable. I didn't care for what happens to her in the last act though. That felt unnecessary. I especially liked Indigo Rael as Adam's friend Donna. She's a complex character, a mother, a teen, and sexually open. Mary Farley is also strong as Adam's mom.

Tom is the most fascinating character in the film. He's a total creep. Aside from needlessly harassing Adam, he makes sexist remarks to a young waitress, tricks a fast food clerk into a date that transforms into a possible sexual assault, and shows Adam's mom disturbing "blue waffle" pictures. For most of the film, he comes off as a thinly developed villain. His eventual acts of violence and sexual assault aren't surprising. Frankly, his admittance of getting turned on by violence is awkwardly presented and Clark falling back on shock value and boners. However, the character's monologue, were he discusses his past and his relationship with his father, are oddly powerful. Jeremy St. James actually gives a fantastic performance, making Tom an ugly creep but also, oddly easy to watch.

The movie concludes with violence. You could say this is lazy. However, the middle section of the movie, which includes a long drug trip in a school gym, drags on. The whole movie sets up this conflict between Adam and Tom. The ending is a fine pay-off to this. The resolution puts a nice emotional bow on the story.

So "Marfa Girl" is about half/half. It's a lot of the same stuff you'd expect from the director by now. Its dreamy tone is sometimes entrancing, sometimes boring. The script is unbalanced between captivating character study and directionless location piece. I both like the town and have no desire to ever visit it. All things considered, it's what I would expect from the director at this point in his career.

Clark released the movie independently as a streaming rental through his website, with no intention of ever releasing it to theaters or home video. He hopes to reach the kids this way. Maybe he will. I don't know what young people will think out of "Marfa Girl." It won't change detractors mind and it could potentially either surprise or bore Clark defenders. Despite it's issues, it's still the filmmaker's best work in years.

It might be difficult to think of a town more depressing than Marfa, but that is the portrayal. A place that has nothing, and offers even less. Where there is really nothing to do, and a smart student seems to know more than a teacher. There are several border patrol agents, and one is very easy to dislike. To say he is disgusting is an understatement. Locals call him a coconut; dark on the outside, and white on the inside. It turns out his father was extremely abusive, so he grew up needing the pain. But as one said, being a border patrol agent is about the only job one can get other than at a drive in. It is easy to understand what major topics of the teenagers are, and the movie covers a lot of that. Drugs like weed are an escape. One could say the film wanders around aimlessly often without a point. But is that not the reality of the lives portrayed?

Pretentious boring and who cares, I could not believe this film won the best film prize at the 2012 Rome film festival it must have been a bad year for films in the official competition. The film about bored teenagers in El Paso, TX who look like there were ripped off Calvin Kline a fashion ad, bad acting bad sex, and of course stereotyping border patrol agents as bad people who are to get you and make life miserable. Larry Clark should learn from his greater film like Kids and Bully and remember when he could actually make films and not bore audiences to death. nothing much to say about a film with nothing much to tell.