Cute Face, Blank Eyes
So, what do you do after you kill a security guard (but not maliciously)? How about some of the most listless, disconnected sex ever filmed (with what must have been the shallowest, stupidest girl ever seen on film), and then break up with her a few days later? Or, perhaps, do you write a confessional letter to another girl who guessed what you did after a single conversation, and then burn it? What ever happened to getting drunk, or a nice meal?
Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park is a quick stroll around an old theme, about as worn as Hudson and Day: the lone killer. This time it's Alex, a high school skateboarder who's about as distant a sprite as I can remember on film. But, he's got a cute face, even if it's as blank as a cartoon, and girls like him, too. He can obviously lie with the best of them, too, from cops to his girlfriend. And, while we're trying to understand him. his parents are getting divorced. Alex is looking for a ride on the train, and the security guard just tried to pull him off the boxcar. Who would know the guy would take a flip backwards and get split in half by another passing train?
Gratefully, this was only a 90-minute film (and without some of the skateboard sequences, long walks, and a lot of slow motion, it could be shorter). Even scarier than Alex's relief as he burns his confession in a beachside fire, is that he started the confession because of a girl. I guess there's something mawkish about that, perhaps redeeming. For me, it's neither fish nor fowl: not a monster, but certainly no fellow.
What is it about this generation?
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