Review of Marfa Girl (2012) by Ola G — 27 Mar 2016

Adam (Adam Mediano), a directionless 16-year-old living in the working class US/Mexico border town of Marfa, Texas, who is approaching his seventeenth birthday in a matter of days. He is beginning to become sexually curious, hoping to get lucky with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend Inez (Mercedes Maxwell), who he trusts completely, but also being tempted with sex from numerous other people, including his twentysomething neighbor, an aggressive local artist and his high school teacher. While an unhinged, misogynistic border patrol agent watches over the neighbourhood. What ensues is a web of sex, drugs, and violence as the Latino skater punks adjust to their gritty, aimless life in the dead end town...

Despite winning the award for best film at the Rome Film Festival, the major critical attention directed at "Marfa Girl" has generally been more lukewarm in its enthusiasm. Boyd van Hoeij of Variety praised the cinematography while directing criticism at the acting of some cast members and the generally shallow plot, mentioning that "the sex and nudity are as plentiful as the plot and teen characters are thin." Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter praised some aspects of the dialogue and cinematography, but said that the cinematography was "nothing new" and looked at times as if "it was ripped out of a Levi's ad." "Marfa Girl" is classic Larry Clark turf with themes of destructive adolescent behaviour, broken families, teenage angst and sex. Meaning we have seen it before and there´s nothing new under the sun. Frankly it´s quite interesting how Clark manages to be so static in his development as a director even if movies like "Kids", "Bully" and "Ken Park" were great films and has its place in the genre itself. But, how many times can we see the same topics being dragged out and dissected over and over by the same director? And in "Marfa Girl" Clark throws in a subplot concerning a misogynistic border patrol agent (a strong performance by Jeremy St. James) that sort of diverts the focus in a strange way. There´s strong topics and Clark manages to keep everything in a documentary style that works in certain scenes and in other it just becomes static, slow paced, bad and all the long pointless monologues are hardly that intriguing. And the acting is of course not spot on all the time, which I assume is what Clark wants. There´s impact, but less context. The person that stands out for me in "Marfa Girl" is the gorgeous and intriguing Drake Burnette who plays Marfa Girl. Her strong opinions, her will to explore her sexuality, her intellect, her beauty and her sexual glow.