SXSW 1999–Splendor/Go

These are the last two movies that I’ll see at SXSW this year. I have to work tomorrow night, so I’ll miss out on all of the closing festivities. Well, I can use a night of sleep for a change.

The first movie is Splendor, the new Greg Araki flick. Now, I saw The Doom Generation. It was terrible. My vote for the worst movie ever made. There was no good dialogue, no good acting, no good direction, no good anything…except for Rose McGowen’s…well. Let’s not take that one on.

I really didn’t want to waste my time with Splendor because I had heard that all of Araki’s movies were the same. Badly placed cultural references (“I just wanna go home and listen to my Smiths’ tapes!”) and profanities that are supposed to sound realistic but just sound retarded. A friend of mine, however, told me that this one was different. It actually had a good story that was well written.

Luckily, I agree. (I’m not sure who that’s lucky for. I’m sure a bad review from me wouldn’t change a damn thing for Araki’s future.)

Veronica (Kathleen Robertson–90210), Abel (Johnathon Schaech–That Thing You Do!, Doom Generation) and Zed (Matthew Keesler–Last Days Of Disco) are the members of a threesome. Veronica meets Abel first at a club, but then meets Zed, the drummer in the band. She gives Abel her phone number and Zed her body. Well, it all evens out in the end.

She can’t decide who she loves more, so she decides to love both of them. They can live with it and then they all move in together. Their lives are perfect until an unexpected visitor arrives–a baby.

Then there’s a third guy, Ernest (Eric Mabius–Welcome To The Dollhouse and the new Crow), a successful director of tv-movies who has his eye on Veronica. He offers her stability whereas Abel and Zed (great alphabetical naming) offer her good sex, but not much in the way of security.

I’ll stop there. It’s a pretty good movie, even if it’s not very original. Go back to 1961 to Truffaut’s Jules And Jim. Same exact story, only more revolutionary because it was the first. And it’s a really good movie. This, however, updates the story pretty well. And it actually has some good dialogue! Sooprize, sooprize, sooprize!!! Oh, it still slips every once in a while, but overall Araki keeps the cultural references to the good opportunities. There’s also some pretty good acting. These guys all surprised me. It still had that really weird color thing going that Araki seems to have in all of his movies. He always uses really bright, almost blinding color in his party scenes (and even some that shouldn’t be party scenes). It almost looks like he may have watche a Kubrick movie. I doubt it, though. I don’t think he’s that smart.

Of course, it also surprised me that, even though there’s a lot of sex going on, they manage to keep Kathleen covered. Amazing.

Go was the second film of the day. This is the new one from the director of Swingers, Doug Linman. It’s the story of teen aged ravers in the 90s and how their lives intertwine with a drug dealer, three cops, a Vegas strip bar owner and a couple of actors. Most of these people have ever met before this day, but they will all have their lives changed in a really weird turn of events.

The movie starts off with Ronna (Sarah Polley–Sweet Hereafter) being very tired after a 14 hour shift at the grocery store. Then Simon (Desmond Askew) gets her to take his shift so he can go to Vegas (Baby!). She takes it so she won’t get evicted, but then she’s approached by two guys who usually get drugs from Simon. She sees an opportunity and tells them that she’ll see what she can do. Drugee friend, Mannie (Nathan Bexton–Nowhere) and sex-starved virgin(?), Claire (Katie Holmes) tag along for the ride.

From here on out I really can’t tell you anything without giving away too much. All I can say is that Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr, Breckin Meyer (Dancer, TX, Pop. 81) and Timothy Olyphant (Scream 2) all have pretty substantial roles in it.

The construction is a lot like Pulp Fiction. (Go figure. Doug Linman doing another Tarantino reference.) It starts out with Ronna’s story. Then, after it finishes hers, it starts on Simon’s in the same place we started Ronna’s segment and go through his trip to Vegas. Then there’s Scott and Jay’s story. Then Katie’s. Then they all come together to finish the complete story. I’ve always liked movies that do this (not that there are a lot of them…Pulp Fiction, this one and a Spanish film with Salma Heyak called Midaq Alley), but I know that a lot of people don’t. If you don’t like it or movies about teenagers taking drugs and going to raves, avoid this movie. On the other hand, if you like a good movie that keeps your interest and has a lot of cool characters, go see this one. It’s got all the fun of Swingers, just on a bigger scale. He’s got a budget this time. And yet he still casts James Duval. What’s up with that?

The only other problem I had was the Breakfast Club reference. They do it, then they explain it. We all got it the first time. We didn’t need Katie to come right out and say it. Did we? Well, I didn’t, and neither did the audience I saw it with.

Anyway, Go opens on April 9th. Go to your local theatre! Go see it!!! It’s awesome!