Totally F***ed Up **** (1993, James Duval) – Classic Movie Review 1039

Gregg Araki’s 1993 movie Totally F***ed Up focuses on a gang of half a dozen gay and lesbian teenagers living in Los Angeles who are totally fed up and f***ed up outcasts.

Writer-cinematographer-editor-producer-director Gregg Araki’s 1993 movie Totally F***ed Up focuses on a gang of half a dozen gay and lesbian teenagers living in Los Angeles who are totally fed up and f***ed up outcasts. It’s not their fault. Their parents kicked them out, they’re broke and bored, their lovers cheat on them and they’re harassed by gay bashers.

This involving, inventive, in-your-face 90s New Queer Cinema movement outing is made by the director of The Living End (1992), which was his third film, made for $20,000.

Like all his films, Totally F***ed Up is sexy and provocative, with a sharp, hard edge.

The film details the lives and romances of its six teenage characters, four gay men and a lesbian couple, who have formed a unit and battle obstacles to get along with each other and with life.

Totally F***ed Up is a spirited, stylish low-budget flick, motored with plenty of rage, with an excellent star performance from James Duval as the suicidal Andy, who gives the film its title.

Roko Belic, Susan Behshid, Jenee Gill, Gilbert Luna, Lance May are the other main cast members.

It premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Strand Releasing on August 19, 1994.

Araki called it ‘a rag-tag story of the fag-and-dyke teen underground… a cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick.’ He shot on 16mm film without permits and with virtually no crew, operating the camera himself, helped only by a sound person and producer/ PA.

Totally F***ed Up is the start of Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy that continues with The Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997), all three films now established cult classics. Andrea Sperling, his student friend at University of California, Santa Barbara, co-produces the films with him.

The trilogy received a thumbs down and zero stars from Roger Ebert.

Gregg Araki was born on 17 December 1959. After Splendor (1999), Araki returned in 2004 with Mysterious Skin and then the stoner comedy Smiley Face (2007), His 2010 film Kaboom is the first winner of the Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm. Araki followed Kaboom with White Bird in a Blizzard (2014).

The cast are James Duval as Andy, Roko Belic as Tommy, Susan Behshid as Michele, Jenee Gill as Patricia, Gilbert Luna as Steven, Lance May as Deric, Alan Boyce as Ian, Craig Gilmore as Brendan, and Nicole Dillenberg as Dominatrix.

http://derekwinnert.com/the-living-end-1992-mike-dytri-craig-gilmore-classic-movie-review-1527/

http://derekwinnert.com/the-doom-generation-1995-gregg-araki-classic-film-review-1040/

http://derekwinnert.com/nowhere-1997-gregg-araki-classic-film-review-1041/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1039

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