Marfa Girl

Larry Clark (Kids, Ken Park) works best when he is forced to stick to a pretty strict narrative track. Bully, by far and away Clark’s best film to date (and sadly the only one worth serious attention), benefits from its rigid adherence to David McKenna’s screen translation of Jim Schutze’s book Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge - which is in turn based on events surrounding the real life killing of high schooler Bobby Kent in early 1990’s Southern Florida.
Within Bully, Clark is forced into hitting specific events and running in the predetermined groove of an A-B-C plot progression. Such elements are noticeably absent in his other films. When he operates within such a framework, it is clear that Clark can strike a lucid balance between documentary realism and terrifyingly absurdist black comedy. It’s a real shame therefore that Bully is Clark’s diamond in the rough, bookended on both sides by films that are too often self indulgent, unfocused and occasionally quite repugnant. It seems that when Clark has free reign over where to take his films (structurally and thematically) he too often defaults to, and lingers on, the same grating scenarios and troublesome images, all at the sacrifice of a compelling narrative.
Marfa Girl is no exception to the rule, packed to the rafters with swirling images of young teenage bodies in various states of undress and stimulation. These aspects have earned Clark a reputation as an off key 'Fagin figure' in the US indie scene - and as he grows older his characters and cinematic preoccupations stay, tiresomely and predictably, the same. 2.5/5

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