GUMMO US, 1997, 89 minutes, Colour. Jacob Sewell, Nick Sutton, Jacob Reynolds, Chloe Sevigny, Caria Glucksman.

Directed by Harmony Korine. Gummo is the first film to be directed by Harmony Korine, aged twenty-four when he made the film. He had previously written the screenplay for Larry Clarkes Kids and he was to write for Clarke with Ken Park. He also directed with julien donkey boy and Mr Lonely. The film is set in Ohio after a tornado, with an explanation by the key character of the results of the tornado, especially the disappearance of adults. The film is episodic, Korine using professionals and non-professionals, choosing people who looked distinctive (running the danger of accusation of exploitation) but also celebrating people who live on the margin. The main characters are teenagers, wandering from episode to episode but also in contact with their mother. The film is surreal as well as realistic, something characteristic of Korines films. The musical score ranges from Bach to Roy Orbison. Some commentators found a difficulty when the film was first released because of the occupation of the two youths, searching for stray cats to kill them and sell them to the supermarket. It is the symptom where audiences react more vigorously to the deaths of animals rather than to the deaths of humans on the screen. The film is not easy to sit through but it is an interesting 90s exercise in personalised and surreal cinema. 1.Harmony Korine? His age, writing and directing? His use of a professional cast? Of amateurs, of nonactors? 2.The Ohio setting, the ordinary town, post-tornado? The homes, the supermarkets, the range of people in the town at the margins? The musical score? 3.The visual style, realism, performance art? 4.Tummler and Solomon? Their age, their friendship? On their bikes? The explanation of the tornado by Solomon, the catastrophe, the trauma, the effect on the young people and the suggestion that the tornado destroyed any moral norms? The death of adults? The survival of youngsters? 5.Dot and Helen, the electric tape, their breasts? Their watching their friend Eddie and his tennis practice? Listening about his ADD? Dot and Helen and their searching for a lost cat, the near molestation, the man who claimed to know where the cat was? Their characters? Relationship with Tummler and Solomon? 6.Tummler and Solomon, the cats, the sales, the shooting, sniffing glue? The other boys wanting to hunt the cats? The visit to the prostitute? Solomons mother, his working in the basement and exercising, her tap-dancing? Tummler and his diary? The scene of the arm-wrestling, the chairwrestling? The break-in, the friends house, the friend wearing womens clothes? The impact of switching off the respirator for the grandmother who was in coma? Solomon at home, his mother giving him spaghetti and fudge in the bath? 7.The last scene of Tummler and Solomon, the rain, still shooting their guns at a dead cat? 8.The range of people in the town? The albino woman, the black midget and Korines own cameo in

the film, talking with him? The deaf couple? The retarded girl cheerleader? Her storytelling? 9.The film considered anticipating reality TV? Korines own view that it is a celebration of the dispossessed, the dignity of his performers? Humanist compassion? 10.The moral perspective? The nihilism people with nowhere to go? The end with the rendition of Jesus Loves Me followed by the Black Metal song, Satanism? 11.The film as an example of anarchic comedy and the title coming from Gummo Marx, the fourth Marx Brother?