THE IMPLICATION IS SUBTLE BUT CLEAR
January 6th, 2008The new Gregg Araki movie, “Smiley Face,” comes out on DVD Tuesday. This New York Times reviewer must have been stoned when he decided to write: “Jane crawls inside her bong to escape.” He also wrote:
1.) He gets plenty of opportunities thanks to his lead actress, the “Scary Movie” star Anna Faris, whose freakishly
committed performance as Jane F. suggests Amy Adams’s princess from “Enchanted” dropped into a Cheech and Chong movie.
2.) Despite its laid-back script, “Smiley Face” is as prankishly political as Mr. Araki’s “Doom Generation,” evincing a deep unease with the media-saturated capitalist nation that Jane crawls inside her bong to escape.
3.) The film’s title is drawn from a scene in which Jane envisions the sun as a smiley face. The implication is subtle but clear: Americans fancy themselves free-willed strivers who live in the best of all possible worlds, but they’re really sentient vegetables, rooted in comfort and nourished by manufactured images of bliss. Jane’s apathy-as-rebellion recalls a quotation from Stella Adler: “A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong.”
I can’t want to see it. “Mysterious Skin” ruled.