Review of Liquid Sky (1982) by Paul T — 20 Feb 2008

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this movie - it's either a bizarre cult movie with moments of brilliance or a poorly made piece of trash dripping with faux-edginess and pretension.

The sci-fi elements of the story are really neither here nor there and don't impact much on the story apart from a couple of conversations and trippy visual interludes. The focus of the movie is on a group of lesbian and bisexual characters in the New York punk/new wave scene of the early 80s.

That's where this movie lives or dies for the viewer. If you're into that scene, this is a great historical document of that era. if not, it's a difficult watch. In many ways, the production values are terrible - the acting's not great (though the lead Anne Carlisle does OK in a dual role), the music is awful, sounding like someone playing around with a £30 Casio keyboard, the movie stops every so often for badly filtered effects or long "performance art" sequences that can be painful to watch as can the feminist overtones.

Overall, it's an interesting movie with parallels to Alex Cox's Repo Man and Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer regarding the documenting of that time in history. As entertainment for the rest of us, it's a miserable failure.