Marfa Girl | Movie review

No one depicts the lives of aimless, nubile teenagers with Larry Clark’s photographic clarity or anything like his monomaniacal persistence. Although it’s been seven years since the Kids and Bully director’s last feature, Wassup Rockers, Clark’s interest in the collision of young bodies remains unchecked. His newest film also demonstrates the continuing deterioration of his narrative skills. Marfa Girl is the first of Clark’s movies on which he takes sole screenwriting credit. Based on the evidence, he badly needs a sounding board, someone to advise him, for example, that “I want your hate paste” is not a sentence that should ever be spoken. (In this case it’s from a grown man about to give a blow job to a teenage boy.)

The movie is best when it steers clear of plot altogether, hanging with mumble-mouthed skater Adam Mediano or shadowing free spirit Drake Burnette as she coasts through the Texas art-colony town, spreading free love in word and deed. When the film shifts to Jeremy St. James’s border-patrol agent, it nose-dives with calamitous speed, although the monologue in which he recalls discovering that physical pain made him erect could survive as a camp classic. The movie has some arresting images that hold up well in a high-definition stream—there are no plans for theatrical or DVD release—but for the sake of all concerned, it’s best watched with the sound off. (Available at larryclark.com.)