A Crisp Look Inside The Teeenage Mind
If purity of intent counts for anything, then "Dance Party USA" may be one of the best American films of the year. Shot for what looks like almost no budget, with a young cast of unknowns in Portland, Ore., the movie is a mere 65 minutes long and is filled with as much open, elliptical space between its characters as the thoughts they struggle to articulate.
Directed by Aaron Katz, a 25-year-old filmmaker based in Brooklyn, "Dance Party" trails a pair of high school kids through the groggy mornings and beer-sodden late nights of a Fourth of July weekend, where scruffy teenagers congregate for keg parties and negotiate painfully tentative emotional connections — and quick, decisive sexual hookups.
On the surface, this sounds like a template trademarked by Gus Van Sant or Larry Clark. The lead actors, Cole Pennsinger and Anna Kavan, have the tousled, grungy, ripening look that is the essence of advertisements for American Apparel, a corporation that has learned a lot about sexualizing the barely legal from the lurid efforts of Mr. Clark. And, sure enough, the movie opens immediately with a shocking patch of dialogue, as Mr. Pennsinger's imaginative Gus details an explicitly gynecological misadventure with a 14-year-old girl for the benefit (and disbelieving disgust) of his best friend Bill (Ryan White).
The thing is, since Mr. Katz is very nearly a peer of his characters, his feel for their language and his choice in casting actors who can so naturally embrace it gives the scene — and the rest of the film — an almost documentary feel. This is enhanced by loosely intimate camera work, which compensates for the movie's washy color resolution with tight closeups and the casual exterior photography that has always been the inventive, low-budget filmmaker's best friend — going back to Rossellini's "Open City" and Godard's "Breathless." That air of verisimilitude, coupled with Mr. Katz's immediate kinship with his actors, is what separates him from the Clarks and Van Sants, who always manage to bring an edge of something exploitative or voyeuristic to their adolescent studies, even when it results in impressive work.
Certainly, the material here could lend itself to that. Gus, who is lanky and confident enough to talk girls into having sex with him, likes to make up outrageous stories about his exploits. He revels in this, much to his buddy's eye-rolling chagrin, but it's also a mask for a deeper longing that he hasn't figured out how to express. Ms. Kavan's Jessica, who is more reserved and analytical than her girlfriends, a "gamma girl" who sticks to the margins, already knows the score with Gus — or thinks she does. The two eventually converge after a hilariously low-key party scene, as littered with sharp nuance as half-empty plastic beer cups, and she blatantly calls Gus on his reputation and rejects his advances. Then he makes a startling confession, something that should send her running, but instead arouses a kind of sympathy. Jessica takes two sparklers out of her pocket and lights them, handing one to Gus. They sit in silence for a minute. Then she asks him, "Do you want to go somewhere?"
The way Mr. Katz anatomizes this moment, and the spare, simple details of what follows, is a remarkable act of insight and restraint, refreshing in its authenticity and absolute lack of manufactured effect. When the subject of Gus's confession actually materializes, as he seeks to take a kind of responsibility for his actions, the scene zeroes in on an awkward realism that amplifies the unspoken — painfully and redemptively so. Maybe Gus isn't such a gnarly misogynist, after all. The willingness to let these kids slouch through these ambiguities, reflected in the ambient plunk and twang of Keegan DeWitt's soundtrack, makes "Dance Party, USA" as poignant as it is brief.
