Review of Smithereens (1982) by Samantha S — 04 Aug 2016

NYC looks like shit in Susan Seidelman's 1982 punk debut but it is the perfect milieu for the youth at loose ends that populate her story. Most of them seem to have fled to the city to escape their home lives and to join like-minded others slumming it in the scene.

Wren wants badly to be cool and she manipulates and uses others to try to reach this goal and it doesn't work well for her. The film is her character study. She falls in with nice guy Paul from Montana, who lives out of his van but she doesn't treat him right, instead trying to curry the favour of punk rocker Eric (Richard Hell) who wants to hit the road to L.

A. The soundtrack by The Feelies (songs from Crazy Rhythms) is the perfect accompaniment to Wren's travails and adds mood and depth in the ellipses between scenes. The dialogue, though clearly scripted, takes on a naturalistic, almost Morrissey-Warhol sort of feel.

You feel you are there. But where? In a world that no longer exists, dated, scrubbed clean, erased. Nice to see this on the big screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival.