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Between Pasolini's Mamma Roma and Rosi's Diario napoletano, the war zone of Manhattan's Alphabet City. A thriving drug business ("Coke or heroin" like a Little Rascals lemonade stand), a collision of tribes in wintry ratholes. A minstrelsy Jamaican cop stands for law and order, the Brazilian side is an underworld doyenne (Marília Pêra) lording over peewee gangs with a ruthless-maternal hand. ("I run a clean house," lest any of her boys go to jail with unclean underwear.) Her flagrant theatricality harmonizes surprisingly with the glazed posing of her lunkheaded son (Richard Ulacia), whose deadpan smolder crumbles the moment he opens his mouth and shouts his dialogue. There are also Puerto Rican opponents, a Mary Woronov decoy (Geraldine Smith), a Teutonic zombie (Ulrich Berr) and his slumming blonde (Linda Kerridge), "Miss America" with an Aussie accent. "And now they start to fuck up the whole Alphabet?" "You mean gentrify." Paul Morrissey sees the absurdism of it all, and brings Oliver Twist to bear upon the hilarity underneath the tragedy. Tangible seediness creates its own agony and ecstasy, Saint Sebastian's martyrdom is re-imagined with cigarette burns on a tan torso during a gang initiation ritual. Phonetic line readings, vibrant salsa tunes, lingering views of syringe-pierced forearms and oozing head wounds, the calm nadir of a Menudo kitsch shop. Above all there's Pêra's satirical hauteur among bruisers and junkies, changing wardrobes from scene to scene and ad-libbing profanities in Portuguese and launching into a pricelessly gratuitous rendition of "Tico-Tico." "Ignorant armies clash by night," says the poet, Morrissey closes on Ulacia's vacant gaze and Pêra's witchy cackle, cf. Visconti's The Damned. With Angel David, Rodney Harvey, and John Leguizamo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |