Bully (2001, Larry Clark) (Patreon)

52/100

Second viewing, last seen early in 2002. (Must have felt obligated to watch it prior to filling out my Skandies ballot.) I disliked it then and still can't stomach its overwhelming Clarkiness, which gets shoved in your face immediately: Bully's very first line is "I want you to suck my big dick." While we do later learn that Marty's doing phone-sex work at the bully's behest, that's a negligible factor in the murder (compared to the beatings and verbal abuse), mentioned just once and never shown again. There's no reason other than ostensible shock value to open the movie with a teenager talking dirty, just as there's absolutely no reason to throw in a close-up of Ali's crotch while she and Lisa discuss decidedly non-sexual matters over the phone. Hardcore auteurists tend to love Clark, perhaps because he foregrounds his preoccupations with seemingly zero self-consciousness, no matter how irrelevant they may be. For those of us not automatically bowled over by a personal vision, however, the nonstop, Kids-style prurience just serves as a distraction in this particular context. (Clark is so committed to bare torsos that he has the police take Marty out of his own bedroom and into the squad car shirtless, just a few minutes after randomly showing Lisa topless on the phone.) Anyone who's been reading me for a while knows that I'm not even remotely opposed to onscreen sexuality and nudity—rather the opposite, in fact—but it's so pointlessly pervasive here that I can't help feeling as if I'm watching someone's homemade fap edit of a movie rather than the movie itself. I can find my own porn, Larry.

What makes this especially frustrating is that Clark would be this film's ideal director were he only capable of keeping it in his pants for longer than about half an hour. The murder itself is as credibly horrific as it should be, maintaining just the right distance from these kids' bizarrely half-assed bloodlust; vivid, nightmarish details abound, e.g. Heather casually giving the kill signal and then assuming a fetal position in the car's back seat as soon the violence begins. The whole sequence is masterfully orchestrated, starting with the cross-cutting between vehicles as they drive to the canal, alternating between uncertainty and bravado. Characters who'd previously come across as largely interchangeable horndogs take on rich, distinct personalities. (Huge exception: Rachel Miner, who manages to convey Lisa's kewpie-doll amorality even when deeply mired in Clarksville.) This sudden burst of excellence continues through the crime's immediate aftermath, as the culprits proceed to just blurt out what happened, confessing to uninvolved friends, unaware of how deranged they sound to people who aren't part of their folie à sept. And then it's gone, as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had appeared, and we're for some reason watching everyone have grave conversations while fucking and eventually get arrested in a montage that resembles a shitty '90s music video. When Bully deigns to tackle the darkness at the heart of its real-lfe story, it's genuinely disturbing. When it's just Clark leering and reveling in teen vice...well, that, too, is disturbing, I suppose. But not in a way that I appreciate.