Dirty Girl
DIRECTED BY ABE SYLVIA
Of the dozen-plus vintage pop hits that comprise the Dirty Girl soundtrack, there doesn’t happen to be a place for Love and Rockets’ 1985 cover of “Ball of Confusion.” Nonetheless, it would have been a doubly appropriate selection for Abe Sylvia’s semi-autobiographical, ’87-set comic fantasy about a secretly gay teen and the high-school hussy he idolizes. The thematic relevance to a sexual identity crisis is obvious, but sadly, the song’s title is also a succinct general synopsis of Syvlia’s wayward debut.
Juno Temple, at least, is well cast the brazen Danielle, whose promiscuity earns her an unsavoury reputation and a relegation to the remedial class. It’s there that she meets the overweight, closeted Clark (Jeremy Dozier), and while she initially dismisses him as “that fag,” the duo are inevitably destined for BFF-dom when they’re paired together by the tried and true plot device of a simulated parenting project.
Their bundle of joy is a bag of flour with sharpied-on eyes and a mouth, and Sylvia’s notion of a clever running gag is to magically substitute its blank expression with a frown or a smile—or zany swirly eyes!—in reaction to its caregivers’ conversations. Sylvia’s decidedly un-funny dialogue isn’t aided by the decision to cast the un-funny Milla Jovovich as Danielle’s milfy mom, who’s engaged to marry a mulleted Mormon (an un-funnily insufferable William H. Macy).
Clark and Danielle’s friendship is cemented by their severe mutual daddy issues—his is a belligerent homophobe, hers is AWOL—and they jointly decide to hit the road, him to escape, and her with hopes of reconciliation. And then, rather abruptly, things get all too serious as Danielle’s eff-you exterior is revealed to be a fragile façade. It’s possible this transition was better earned before Harvey Weinstein hacked the film down to 90 minutes from 109, but on this evidence it’s hard to know what might have prompted the normally shrewd bigwig to shell out big bucks for Dirty Girl‘s distribution rights at TIFF in 2010.