Shared Darkness

Wassup Rockers charts a skipped school
day in the life of these “Latino Ramones” — black-clad, tight-pants-wearing
punk aficionados who, constantly harassed for being different, fight to be
themselves. Along with a few friends, the group takes a series of busses up to Beverly
Hills to skateboard. There, hassled by the police,
targeted by residents and seduced by two schoolgirls (Laura Cellner and Jessica Steinbaum) who spark as much to their ethnicity as their scruffiness, the boys
must navigate a surrealistic maze of mock-danger and try to return to the
air-quote safety of their own impoverished burg.

Clark’s films typically have a
roughhewn quality, but here he somewhat eschews the handheld nihilism of his
earlier work for a few more staged and rooted shots. He still has his
cinematic, fetishistic affection for skinny, shirtless teen boys and pouty,
jailbait girls (in Clark’s world, everyone
under 21 is a sexual magnet) and there’s his usual discerning eye for quick,
shorthand detail — from the dirty crasher’s den that’s perfect in its
name-brand-less anonymity to a scene where one character’s mother returns home
in the morning with a wad of single dollar bills. The kids, too, are all right — they have a natural
charm.

But something about Wassup
Rockers feels reductive, perhaps because there’s so little individual
insight into the characters. There’s no doubt legitimacy to the tension between
the Latino “rockers” of the title and their neighborhood’s African-Americans,
as well as the preppy teens they encounter in Beverly
Hills, but things here feel paradoxically authentic
as well as staged. The settings are grungily accurate — save for when we enter tonier
territory — and the crew eventually achieves a sort of collective wounded grace
and place in our memory (Clark is a superb caster, as
the careers of Kids alums Rosario
Dawson and Chloe Sevigny attest), but Wassup
Rockers is also beset with clownish, wildly farcical elements that ring false.

In his positive review, I believe Roger Ebert called this “Larry Clark’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or at least compared the two films. And that’s a discerning and entirely apt point of reference. The films share the same sense of freewheeling adventurism. A key difference, I would argue, is that while the adults of Ferris‘ world almost all present obstacles and are frequently portrayed as derisible, they come off as emblematic of the way the film’s teens see adults. In Wassup Rockers, there’s a seesaw quality to the tone and pitch that is at first merely disorienting, and then eventually invites greater displeasure.

We know the kids aren’t Mexican, as they constantly have to
remind various folks they encounter, but they do come across as emblems of a cultural minority that Clark
seems to want to flog and celebrate by merely contrasting with buffoonish
subsets from other races. By the time Janice Dickinson, in a weird cameo, is
electrocuted in a tub after attempting to seduce Kico, you’re left wondering
exactly whose view of Los
Angeles Wassup
Rockers represents.

Clark’s defense of this comes in an engaging and interesting audio commentary track that serves as the DVD’s crown jewel supplemental extra, alongside extra behind-the-scenes footage and a collection of trailers. In this track, Clark talks about his influences for the movie, his sense of visual style and also how he wanted to both ground and exalt the rituals of his young charges by exaggerating and stereotyping the air-quote mainstream characters in the piece. Listening to this, I found myself coming around a bit — agreeing with what he was saying and seeing a greater aim to the work — even if I ultimately don’t think he entirely pulls it off. The film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and comes with English 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, plus English and Spanish subtitles. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)