**½/****
starring Jonathan Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa, Milton Velasquez, Usvaldo Panameno
written and directed by Larry Clark
by Bill Chambers These days, when I think of Larry Clark, I think of Stephen Wiltshire, the outsider artist profiled in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars. Diagnosed with autism early in life, Wiltshire soon after began doing immaculately detailed sketches of animals before moving on to buses and eventually cityscapes. So advanced was Wiltshire's technique at such an early age that Sacks and co. were fascinated to learn that his talent came pre-evolved: as a child, he drew like a grown-up, but he drew like that same grown-up in adulthood. Whatever you think of Clark's directorial debut, Kids, there's no denying that he's a natural–a savant, if you will–at harnessing the prickly energy of youth. And yet, although he's since moved on from "animals" (the mindless fuck-bunnies of Kids and Bully) to "buses" (the emotionally shipwrecked fuck-bunnies of Teenage Caveman and Ken Park) to "cityscapes" (the El Salvadoran fuck-bunnies of the new film, Wassup Rockers), he hasn't–and I don't mean this in the patronizing sense–matured; you can essentially start anywhere in the Clark canon without missing a beat. It's nice to see him grapple with the "other" in Wassup Rockers, but all he's really done is turn the tint down on his usual band of utopia-seeking skater punks, and as the picture's relatively tame surface works to offset its intensely nihilistic underbelly (Clark has never had this little regard for human life–and that the victims of the film's Rube Goldberg deathtraps are by and large pedophiles isn't nearly as self-flagellating as you might presume), the cumulative effect is one of déjà vu. Treating the Latino characters' sojourn into Beverly Hills like a social experiment, Clark remains a compelling, primal anthropologist–and the mischief-making in Wassup Rockers spreads a surprisingly infectious joy. But there are only so many times you can applaud a one-trick pony. PROGRAMME: Visions
