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These days, any director who shakes his camera a lot (sorry, employs the maverick use of hand-held camera) is deemed to be brave. The Dogme technique, which has indeed produced impressive results like "Festen", is almost entirely responsible. Having already acquired the sad status of new clich茅, Dogme - at its most reduced - only goes to show that neurotic camerawork is no substitute for a script.
Translated, this means that "Julien Donkey-Boy" is tiresome in the extreme. Certainly spawned by the imagination of an original (Harmony Korine did after all make "Gummo"), the new film seems like so much showing off, and this ends up excluding the viewer. It is, of course, clear that the staccato camera movements are there to capture the volatility of a schizophrenic (Ewen Bremner), around whom the entire film is built. Julien is an attendant at a school for the blind, and his kindness and sensitivity are revealed through his work; his violent nature, however, hits the screen at the very start when we spot him randomly attacking a young boy who is playing with turtles by a pond. We also observe Julien as he relates to his pregnant sister Pearl, his brother Chris who dreams of becoming a wrestler, a girl who yearns to become an ice-skater, and his hostile, abusive father (played by the German director Werner Herzog). In the midst of chaos Julien struggles to find both stability and redemption.
Herzog, responsible for a clutch of powerhouse scenes, is certainly an example of creative casting, while Bremner - so at one with the psychology of Julien - succeeds in making us think, laugh and gasp. And, because the film was largely improvised, this is all the more impressive. But, irritatingly, all the actors are wrapped up in a style which is like being locked in a room with someone who just won't sit still.
