Word: punk
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Susan Seidelman's Smithereens, made for $100,000, is a cautionary tale of the Manhattan punk milieu in the tradition of such '60s films as Shadows and The Connection. Its 19-year-old heroine, Wren (Susan Berman), has seen it all, done most of it, learned nothing. Outfitted in punk khaki - checker-rimmed dark glasses, red sneakers, ornamental bruise on her arm - Wren crashes the Peppermint Lounge and puts the make on new wave musicians, who pay about as much attention to her as they would to the framed landscape on a motel-room wall. This Piaf-size...
...Vortex, the milieu is not punk but the sensibility is. The film-making couple known as Scott B and Beth B have worked in the New York new wave underground since the mid-'70s, shooting on Super 8 stock and exhibiting the results in punk nightclubs. Vortex, made in 16 mm on an $80,000 budget, is their first shot at the relatively big time. Its plot is standard sleuthing in the corridors of power. A Congressman has been killed on orders from a reclusive plutocrat (Bill Rice). Private Eye Angel Powers (Lydia Lunch) finds the source...
...songs their children cherish, far from amassing rich emotional associations, are merely destroying brain cells. The workings of special songs are necessarily subjective, and they promote a kind of hubris. Still, even allowing for that effect, it is sometimes hard to imagine what private anthems will arise from, say, punk or new wave music. Are there couples now that will for years grow mistily tender when they hear a ditty by Meat Loaf...
...taking itself seriously, Starstruck makes the current gult of new wave films look positively silly. From the stumbling lines and stagy acting of the Clash's Rude Boy to the slick but soulless Smithereens, the punk "message" film takes a deserved beating at the hands of its sendup. Having reached the likes of "Quincy," "60 Minutes" and Hollywood, New Wave is old hat, and somebody ought to be laughing...
...image is perhaps a trifle extreme, but for Punk, the archetype of the breed, ambition does not extend even onto the macadam of the mall's parking lot. Because he has a criminal record (for burglarizing stores in the mall, of course), he is pessimistic about hit future. "I probably couldn't get a job here now," he says wistfully. "Unless--" we imagine his dull eyes catching a tiny spark--"I go down to the other end, where they don't know...