Genre:
Avant-garde / Experimental
Release Date: 01/01/2001
Sound: 2
Run Time:
Flags: Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Profanity
Distributor/Studio: New Line Home Video
In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy
Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill cats, tape their boobies, arm-wrestle, bathe, cross-dress, huff glue, avoid perverts, pay to have sex with retarded girls, lift makeshift dumbbells to the strains of
Madonna's
"Like a Prayer," fight, cuss, shave their eyebrows, undergo cancer treatment, euthanize senior citizens, and pee on passing cars. A hallucinatory barrage of images and scenarios with little in the way of traditional plot,
Gummo has been variously described as a surrealist joke, a visual poem, and a worm's-eye view of white-trash suffering. The main characters include
Solomon (
Jacob Reynolds), who sells cat carcasses to a middleman who procures them for use at a local Chinese restaurant; his mother (
Linda Manz), who teaches him to tap dance while reminiscing about her dead husband;
Tummler (
Nick Sutton), a mullet-haired local sex symbol; a midget (
Bryant L. Crenshaw); a pair of boy-crazy, bleach-blond sisters named
Dot (
Chloe Sevigny) and
Helen (
Carisa Bara); a slut with a lump in her breast (
Lara Tosh); a group of drunken louts; and
Bunny Boy (
Jacob Sewell), who wanders the town enigmatically in a pair of long pink ears. In between scenes of these characters enacting their bizarre routines,
Korine intersperses impressionistic and quasi-
documentary scenes with voice-over narration that ranges from incest memoirs to arty dialogue along the lines of "He's got what it takes to be a legend: He's got a marvelous persona." Shot just outside Nashville, TN,
Gummo includes costume designs by
Korine's then-girlfriend,
Chloe Sevigny, who also plays
Dot and who previously starred in the
Korine-scipted,
Larry Clark-directed
Kids.
Jacob Reynolds would go on to appear in
Getting to Know You, though few of the director's other discoveries have appeared on film since. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
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