Kids, sex, drama, consequences… yep, it’s another movie from Larry Clark, who specializes in narratives about young people living dangerously on the cusp of adulthood (see "Kids," "Ken Park," etc). But for "Marfa Girl," Clark took a slightly more anarchic approach to putting it together.
"What happened was the last two films I wrote myself — ‘Wassup Rockers‘ and ‘Marfa Girl.’ I‘d been talking to writers and I found out that all these writers have these rules, there are certain ways they do things, and I probably should have snapped to this earlier but I don’t need no fucking writers, and I hate rules, and so I said I wanna make a film where I only put in what I’m interested in," he told Jessica Kiang at the Rome Film Festival in 2012. "And I don’t care about getting from here to there, only what I’m interested in, and I’ll figure a way to make it work. And the freedom made me so happy. Coming from the art world there are no rules, and once you start playing with rules then you’re in trouble, so this was really freeing."
And yet, the end result is a movie that is ultimately quite familiar. The film "is not going to convince Clark’s detractors, nor will it disappoint his fans, as most of what people consider his trademarks are in place," Kiang wrote in her review. "Some of the actors, many of them amateurs cast locally, are a little awkward in their roles, and sometimes we slip just a little too far into youth-worship territory with the camera obsessing over the gorgeousness of its young cast. It certainly looks like a Larry Clark film but it is perhaps a shame that his aesthetic has been so appropriated by other indie filmmakers, music videos and commercials that it feels a bit shopworn."
"Marfa Girl" opens on March 27th. Watch below. [Indiewire]