Synopsis
John in The Living End filled the PC monitor with 'fuck' swallowing grievance. To Gregg ARAKI, the word seems to reflect his frustration and rage against the world. The creation of a provocative film titled with the very word is therefore no less than his aversion against system. Starting with a newspaper headline on teen gays' suicidal rate, the movie depicts alienation, fatigue, insecurity, and frustration of six gay adolescents who have formed a sort of 'family,' their gossips and love affairs disoriented without purpose. It thus assumes an anthropologic form of 'their lifestyle dotted with boredom and deprivation.' As ARAKI once put it, this movie is a queer version of The Breakfast Club tinted with an avant-garde texture. He refused lock himself up in the conventional film structure through interviews, interval subtitles, and fractioned narratives, apparently influenced by Jean-Luc GODARD's Masculin, feminin. Borrowed from ARAKI's favorite phrases, Totally Fucked Up has become irreverent and irresponsible in terms of contents and formality. (HONG Sung Nam)