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| "Sensual and suggestive...it
is a serious and discreet work of considerable dark impact and no little
humor." - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times |
| "...awkwardly, distressingly real."
- Dennis Harvey, Variety |
| "...disturbingly well-acted, gruesome
and boundary-pushing..." - Stephen Holden, New York Times
|
| "Frisk was born amongst controversy
when it was the closing-night film at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian
Film Festival (1996). The crowd's reaction was so hostile that audience
members who had walked out came back to boo the film at the end. If you're
looking for positive gay images on the screen, this is not the film for
you. But if you have a place in your heart for arty serial killer films,
you'll enjoy the way Frisk takes cinematic form and twists it on its ear.
From the brilliant cinematography (which includes the best use of PXL Vision I've ever seen) to the startling editing (extended flashbacks tear the narrative structure to shreds) the film is completely inaccessible, but compelling on its own terms. The point of view jumps from character to character. Since a lot of the boys look the same, it's hard to keep the story straight (no pun intended), but the main thread is that there's this gay guy who's writing intense letters to his lover, graphically describing how he picks up guys and kills them. The lover shares the letters with his (also gay) little brother and at the end of the movie, lover and brother go visit the killer guy and the audience is left to wonder if the whole thing is supposed to faked, real or imaginary. The film has slowed its momentum by that point, but everything before is fascinatingly decadent (in a low-key kind of way). Director Todd Verow does a great job of capturing the "seen-it-all" boredom of the gay punk scene, where everyone sleeps on a futon on the floor. There's some really great moments, and the whole thing is so uncomfortable and sad that you just have to laugh just to protect yourself. Also, Parker Posey gives a great performance as the jaded valley girl disaffected even by murder. I also liked when the killer guy, along with Parker and her boyfriend, pick up a junkie to kill. He's so preoccupied with his dope that he doesn't even realize the trio's sinister intentions. Ultimately this film made me sick to my stomach, but in a really great way." -Sarah Jacobson for FILM ZONE |
| Todd Verow's first feature film, Frisk, was a controversial experience at the Sundance, Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals of 1996. Told in an elliptical narrative, emulating the "cinematography" of seedy '70's porno's, densely woven from multiple film stocks, video, pixelvision, vibrating with a masterful soundtrack and jammed-packed with "politically incorrect" deeds and dogmas, Verow's FRISK is not so much a film based on a text, as it is a film escaping from such an adaptative treatment. The reworking of any novel can be daunting- the challenge of taking a work so steeped in '80's "whatever" posturing and really tricking it out with a '90's "ouch" was even more so. Despite broken promises, macabre emails, queeny threats, hissy fits, censorship from odd bedfellows and bizarre events during shooting, the film "that ended the new queer cinema" lays a heady wreath on the grave of the gay serial killer mythos. R.I.P. In San Francisco, a well-read audience was assaulted by the world premiere of Frisk as the closing film of the Gay/Lesbian Film Fest in 1996. A "pink" riot ensued. It would screen internationally to similar responses, hated or loved, there seemed to be no middle ground to Verow's bizarre, unexpected concoction. Reviews range from out-right condemnation to wide-eyed marvelling at the film's original time-warped editing, AIDS metaphors and brass balls. |
"In
a jarring, bare-bones New Queer Cinema style, the film's exploration
into the dark recesses of gay male desire results in a confusing conclusion:
Is the drama a legitimate take on the complexity of gay men and their
sexuality in a post-AIDS environment, or , in its depiction of them
as masochists, sadists and killers, is the film in fact self-hating,
if not homophobic? That there are no easy answers
to these questions is a compliment to the film's complexity."
- Images in the Dark, an encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film by Raymond Murray, 1996. |
F
R I S K Michael Gunther Craig
Chester Parker Posey Sound design by Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz Cinematography by Greg Watkins Production Design by Jennifer
Graber Music by Coil
Lee Ranaldo A Screenplay by James Dwyer and Todd Verow Produced by Marcus Hu and Jon
Gerrans Directed and Edited by Todd Verow |
| Purchase FRISK and other Todd Verow films here |