Saw this over at Film Forum the other week -- west end of houston b/w sixth and seventh avenues
deals w/ the divergent trajectories of two young boys who were molested by their little league coach
the one becomes a sex fiend and hustler, the other very nerdy and socially inept
the kid who plays the hustler is the actor from "3rd rock from the sun" and he really does a fine job -- very charismatic
among the reasons that i rate the film:
(1) the hustler kid is portrayed as a very sexual being from even before his encounter w/ the softball coach, and indeed he's gay before the encounter, i.e., masturbates around age 7 or 8 while watching his mother make out with her boyfriend
(2) the softball coach is a beautiful, godlike creature -- perfect body, tanned, but also very childlike, i.e., he relates best to children -- this is not the fat, hairy, bearded monster that we expect a pedophile to look like -- no, he's an idealized version of masculine beauty -- and he is clearly infatuated with the kid who grows up to become the hustler, has a kind of love for him, makes him feel very special and seduces him with candy, videogames, and good times -- he's not the kind of figure you'd despise, which i think is a very good decison (i.e., pedophiles do serious harm to the objects of their desire, and yet they aren't monsters b/c surely their sexual desire is structured in the same way as everybody else's desire, i.e., the origins of their desire and what gets them off are just as arbitary and shrouded in mist as anybody else's, and their only choice is to either act upon their alien and unwanted desire or repress the desire qua affliction)
(3) although the nerdy kid suffers from repressed memory syndrome, something that has since the mid-1990s been shown to be in most cases fabricated memory syndrome, the conceit of the repressed memory is justified on literary grounds -- first, b/c he imagines for many years that he was abducted by aliens, and this effectively gets across the warping effect that such an encounter must have on a person, i.e., the estrangement from this earth and inability to have "normal" relationships (plus it's set in a small town in kansas, i.e., the very freaky heart of america where people sight ufo's, though the hustler kid moves to nyc); second, it fits w/ the temporal structure, i.e, the hustler kid keeps getting into increasingly dangerous sexual encounters, which pushes things forward, while the nerdy kid keeps trying to figure out the riddle of his past, i.e., why he's so disturbed, which pushes things backward, and then the film ends with the two kids together in the house where the softball coach used to live, and it's xmas, and carolers can be heard singing silent night, and yet we know that for them there will be no salvation from their fucked up condition
(4) and it's very good film making in terms of images and music, etc
only criticisms are that it's a tad too superior as regards middle america and the parents are presented as caricatures (though even this is justified in terms of keep some things simple in order to reveal the complexity of other things)
overall = highly recommended
deals w/ the divergent trajectories of two young boys who were molested by their little league coach
the one becomes a sex fiend and hustler, the other very nerdy and socially inept
the kid who plays the hustler is the actor from "3rd rock from the sun" and he really does a fine job -- very charismatic
among the reasons that i rate the film:
(1) the hustler kid is portrayed as a very sexual being from even before his encounter w/ the softball coach, and indeed he's gay before the encounter, i.e., masturbates around age 7 or 8 while watching his mother make out with her boyfriend
(2) the softball coach is a beautiful, godlike creature -- perfect body, tanned, but also very childlike, i.e., he relates best to children -- this is not the fat, hairy, bearded monster that we expect a pedophile to look like -- no, he's an idealized version of masculine beauty -- and he is clearly infatuated with the kid who grows up to become the hustler, has a kind of love for him, makes him feel very special and seduces him with candy, videogames, and good times -- he's not the kind of figure you'd despise, which i think is a very good decison (i.e., pedophiles do serious harm to the objects of their desire, and yet they aren't monsters b/c surely their sexual desire is structured in the same way as everybody else's desire, i.e., the origins of their desire and what gets them off are just as arbitary and shrouded in mist as anybody else's, and their only choice is to either act upon their alien and unwanted desire or repress the desire qua affliction)
(3) although the nerdy kid suffers from repressed memory syndrome, something that has since the mid-1990s been shown to be in most cases fabricated memory syndrome, the conceit of the repressed memory is justified on literary grounds -- first, b/c he imagines for many years that he was abducted by aliens, and this effectively gets across the warping effect that such an encounter must have on a person, i.e., the estrangement from this earth and inability to have "normal" relationships (plus it's set in a small town in kansas, i.e., the very freaky heart of america where people sight ufo's, though the hustler kid moves to nyc); second, it fits w/ the temporal structure, i.e, the hustler kid keeps getting into increasingly dangerous sexual encounters, which pushes things forward, while the nerdy kid keeps trying to figure out the riddle of his past, i.e., why he's so disturbed, which pushes things backward, and then the film ends with the two kids together in the house where the softball coach used to live, and it's xmas, and carolers can be heard singing silent night, and yet we know that for them there will be no salvation from their fucked up condition
(4) and it's very good film making in terms of images and music, etc
only criticisms are that it's a tad too superior as regards middle america and the parents are presented as caricatures (though even this is justified in terms of keep some things simple in order to reveal the complexity of other things)
overall = highly recommended