Cinema Talk

Really great for the most part. Yeah, the concept is taken straight from the “stories about alienation” archive, but formally, it is pretty fantastic. Lots of beautiful Korine-esque 8mm cut scenes complimented by bizarre non-sequitors and poetic voiceovers. The photography for the rest of the movie is a little bit ugly. I mean, Dos Santos knows what looks good, but there’s this odd and kind of awful brownish tint to most of the images. The screenshot above isn’t actually a good indication of what most of the movie looks like, but instead, its example of the small instances of cinematic beauty that Dos Santos captures. Outside of the occasionally dull cinematography (which isn’t really that bad) I just feel like most of the movie is too perfect. The whole coming of age alienation thing can still be done right, but everything feels a little bit too right for me. There’s not enough transgression for this to separate itself from every other “sexual awakening teen drama.” There’s a moment where Dos Santos comes close, it’s when the main character and his best friend sniff glue and watch porn, but he definitely needed a few more awkwardly intimate moments like this for me to truly love it. Instead, it’s just a really good example of the sort of movies I love, but I can’t say it’s nearly as great as Gummo or Rebels of the Neon God or any other film from which this takes heavy cues.