NOWHERE
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Ultra-Stereo
During the course of a single day in LA, a group of teens have sex, get high, find love, experience disappointment, live, die, and get zapped by reptilian aliens from another dimension. Or something...
Opening with a memorable shot of bisexual teen James Duval languishing naked beneath a shower, and ending on an image of TOTAL teenage alienation, NOWHERE concludes Gregg Araki's 'Teen Apocalypse' trilogy - see also TOTALLY F***ED UP (1993) and THE DOOM GENERATION (1995) - a venomous dissection of teenage angst and attitudes. As before, NOWHERE combines parody and surrealism in a freewheeling manner, exposing its beautiful-but-vacant teens as slaves to hormones and commercialism, rendering them impotent in the face of harsh reality. Symbolism runs rampant, and Araki washes the screen in a riot of candy colors, submerging the viewer in the same waking dreamworld inhabited by the film's somnambulistic inhabitants. The late John Ritter plays a smarmy TV evangelist whose broadcasts have an alarming effect on some of the teens, while ex-"Baywatch" star Jaason Simmons plays a former TV idol whose 'nice guy' exterior masks a snake from the pit of hell...
Typical of Araki's output to date, the movie aligns its gorgeous young cast alongside a range of celebrity cameos, including Beverly D'Angelo (as Duval's bitchy mother), Charlotte Rae (a fortune teller), Traci Lords, Shannon Doherty and Rose McGowan (as three Valley-girls who get zapped by the aforementioned alien!), and Lauren Tewes as a terminally cheery TV news reporter. Ryan Phillippe and Heather Graham are a couple of wild-eyed teens who live for sex and speed, while Guillermo Díaz and former pop singer Jeremy Jordan play star-crossed lovers torn apart by drugs and suicide, and Botticellian beauty Nathan Bexton (SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD) becomes an object of desire for Duval and several other cuties. Look fast for beefcake studs John Enos III, 'Playgirl' centerfold Brian Buzzini, and the Brewer twins (shirtless, natch). For all its eye-candy, however, NOWHERE has been criticized in some quarters for signalling a curtailment of the gay content in Araki's movies (there's plenty of hetero sexual activity, but the gay characters barely even touch each other), and there's a bizarre moment when Duval finds true love in the arms of someone who turns out to be... well, something REALLY unpleasant (I'll say no more). Adventurous viewers will get their money's worth, but it feels like a compromised effort, powered by the expectations of a multiplex audience.
The movie is pointless and juvenile and silly and sexy, but it's clearly the work of someone both fascinated and repelled by the subject matter (Devon Odessa and Stacy Keenan appear briefly as a couple of airheads named 'What' and 'Ever'!). Araki followed it with SPLENDOR (1999), a frothy Hollywood-style comedy in which Kathleen Robertson enjoys a three-way relationship with the astonishingly beautiful Johnathan Schaech and Matt Keeslar, though gay viewers drawn to Araki's movies by the uncompromising attitudes of his earlier achievements (cf. THE LIVING END) are hoping for a return to Absolute Queer Anarchy with his upcoming adaptation of Scott Heim's ultra-serious novel MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004).
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Ultra-Stereo
During the course of a single day in LA, a group of teens have sex, get high, find love, experience disappointment, live, die, and get zapped by reptilian aliens from another dimension. Or something...
Opening with a memorable shot of bisexual teen James Duval languishing naked beneath a shower, and ending on an image of TOTAL teenage alienation, NOWHERE concludes Gregg Araki's 'Teen Apocalypse' trilogy - see also TOTALLY F***ED UP (1993) and THE DOOM GENERATION (1995) - a venomous dissection of teenage angst and attitudes. As before, NOWHERE combines parody and surrealism in a freewheeling manner, exposing its beautiful-but-vacant teens as slaves to hormones and commercialism, rendering them impotent in the face of harsh reality. Symbolism runs rampant, and Araki washes the screen in a riot of candy colors, submerging the viewer in the same waking dreamworld inhabited by the film's somnambulistic inhabitants. The late John Ritter plays a smarmy TV evangelist whose broadcasts have an alarming effect on some of the teens, while ex-"Baywatch" star Jaason Simmons plays a former TV idol whose 'nice guy' exterior masks a snake from the pit of hell...
Typical of Araki's output to date, the movie aligns its gorgeous young cast alongside a range of celebrity cameos, including Beverly D'Angelo (as Duval's bitchy mother), Charlotte Rae (a fortune teller), Traci Lords, Shannon Doherty and Rose McGowan (as three Valley-girls who get zapped by the aforementioned alien!), and Lauren Tewes as a terminally cheery TV news reporter. Ryan Phillippe and Heather Graham are a couple of wild-eyed teens who live for sex and speed, while Guillermo Díaz and former pop singer Jeremy Jordan play star-crossed lovers torn apart by drugs and suicide, and Botticellian beauty Nathan Bexton (SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD) becomes an object of desire for Duval and several other cuties. Look fast for beefcake studs John Enos III, 'Playgirl' centerfold Brian Buzzini, and the Brewer twins (shirtless, natch). For all its eye-candy, however, NOWHERE has been criticized in some quarters for signalling a curtailment of the gay content in Araki's movies (there's plenty of hetero sexual activity, but the gay characters barely even touch each other), and there's a bizarre moment when Duval finds true love in the arms of someone who turns out to be... well, something REALLY unpleasant (I'll say no more). Adventurous viewers will get their money's worth, but it feels like a compromised effort, powered by the expectations of a multiplex audience.
The movie is pointless and juvenile and silly and sexy, but it's clearly the work of someone both fascinated and repelled by the subject matter (Devon Odessa and Stacy Keenan appear briefly as a couple of airheads named 'What' and 'Ever'!). Araki followed it with SPLENDOR (1999), a frothy Hollywood-style comedy in which Kathleen Robertson enjoys a three-way relationship with the astonishingly beautiful Johnathan Schaech and Matt Keeslar, though gay viewers drawn to Araki's movies by the uncompromising attitudes of his earlier achievements (cf. THE LIVING END) are hoping for a return to Absolute Queer Anarchy with his upcoming adaptation of Scott Heim's ultra-serious novel MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004).