(Credit: Instagram)
I've always been hit and miss on Gregg Araki ("Mysterious Skin" is bleak stuff and I rather enjoy "Smiley Face" whilst it lasts, but "Doom Generation", "Kaboom" and "Totally Fucked Up" are misfires in my eyes) but for me this is the first of his films which works: a wild, colourful, poppy ride opening on a throwback to "Sunset Boulevard" and rattling on from there with cartoon segues, dream sequences and the satirical backdrop and colours akin to "Velvet Buzzsaw" as backdrops to a rather amusing counter-culture story about relationships, modern art and, yes, sex.
There's a funny threesome moment, and an always Viswanathan-style scene stealing performance from Mason Gooding as a camp sassy colleague of Elliot; and the film manages to wrangle Gregg Araki's eccentricities into a way which works: the pinball plot and free wheeling is in service of a wack-a-doodle energy and screwball comedy; characters do that thing in his movies where they stop and will rant at the audience, but here the rant is a discussion between Wilde and Hoffman about how sexual freedom is actually being reversed, and something I kind of agree with so will allow to slide. Wilde is on an absolute tear in this, and finally has parts worth sinking her teeth into, Hoffman is excellent; and the left-field "zeitgeist" casting choices had me giggling: Charli XCX is XCXcellent as the buttoned up and disinterested girlfriend, Johnny Knoxville plays a detective (I get to say that Charli XCX was in a Johnny Knoxville movie and that makes me so happy) alongside Araki regular Margaret Cho (James Duval also has a funny cameo at the end), whilst Chase Sui Wonders as roommate "Apple" has possibly the funniest aforementioned scene in the film; and the affair on the whole is a rollicking good time. Remember when movies had colour and joi de vivre? When the world needed Gregg Araki the most, he cam back swinging.
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