
Chris Fuller’s
Loren
Cass invites comparisons to Harmony Korine’s work not simply because it’s a
ragged avant-garde snapshot of wayward teens living despairing lives in a
ramshackle environment, but because
Gummo’s
spaghetti-bath-water “protagonist” Jacob Reynolds is actually part of the cast.
The difference between the two works, however, is that Fuller’s portrait of
three St. Petersburg, Florida kids – set in the aftermath of 1996’s race riots –
isn’t after carnival show freakiness and provocation as much as deeply
ingrained misery and desolation, a mood evoked through detached 16mm
compositions set to an eclectic soundscape of punk rock and African-American
activist speeches. One wishes a greater political angle arose from these
juxtapositions, as well as from the frequent sights of disaffected garage
mechanic Cale (Fuller, acting under a pseudonym) and tattooed friend Jason
(Travis Maynard) picking drunken fights with a group of African-American kids,
or of slutty diner waitress Nicole (Kayla Tabish) screwing a multicultural
variety of anonymous boys. Nonetheless, if commentary is generally sidestepped,
an oppressive sense of brutality, loneliness and ennui remains visceral. The
cumulative effect of Fuller’s look-at-me style is ultimately too pretentious
and self-conscious for its own good. But even so,
Loren Cass occasionally suggests, in its story’s mixture of furious
fisticuffs, indifferent sex, and halfhearted suicide attempts, a desperate
desire on the part of its characters to find emotional sustenance through
physicality.
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