Crazy/Beautiful
dir. John Stockwell
Opens Fri June 29 at various theaters.
Of all the reliable teen film tropes, none is more rugged than the star, race-, and class-crossed high-school love affair. As old as time, and sanctified by the oeuvre of John Hughes, the subgenre of impossibly beautiful upper-middle-class WASP boy/girl meets absurdly beautiful working-class ethnic girl/boy is an immutable component of popular cinematic longing.
Crazy/Beautiful comes swaddled in the skintight half-shirts and thin-wale cords of teenage sexuality. Kirsten Dunst cavorts through her privileged life, oozing aggressive California sexuality and ribald naughtiness. She meets Carlos (Jay Hernandez), a poor, industrious Latino football player who rides the bus two hours just to get to the posh high school Nicole takes for granted. It’s not long before Nicole’s overt carnality is revealed as the symptom of deep wounds that prevent her from loving or trusting anyone… except Carlos, whose moral sturdiness and ambition are put to the test by his hot white girlfriend’s devil-may-care behavior.
The film is better than it probably sounds. But like all teen movies in this era of sexualized youth, Crazy presents a dilemma for grown-up audiences in the beguilingly ripe form of Kirsten Dunst, who is all but molested by the camera in every single scene.
The film would feel somehow cleaner if its sympathy for Nicole’s self-destructiveness weren’t overwhelmed by its desire to milk Dunst’s luscious, braless rack and nubile, panty-clad Hollywood ass in shot after lascivious shot. Of course, it would also be eminently less watchable. The line is blurry, since the character’s sexuality is an intrinsic part of the story. But director John Stockwell’s lens makes us complicit in exploiting the hotness of the hot-headed lead character, thereby rendering its message–that you can’t have it both ways–a little hollow.
