Julien Donkey-Boy

The first Dogme 95 film made outside of Europe, Harmony Korine’s follow-up to his divisive GUMMO finds him and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (who shot the original Dogme film, Thomas Vinterberg’s THE CELEBRATION) employing the aesthetics of digital video to visionary, expressionistic effect. Deeply compassionate beneath its shocking surface, JULIEN DONKEY-BOY centers on a schizophrenic young man (Ewen Bremner) whose life with his dysfunctional family—including an abusive father (Werner Herzog) and a protective, pregnant sister (Chloë Sevigny)—is evoked through a kaleidoscope of impressionistic fragments at once unsettling and strangely, transcendently beautiful.

Drama

6.4