PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW


If Ghost World paints a bleak picture of life out of high school, then Bully paints an absolutely harrowing one. You would expect no less from director Larry Clark, whose still photographs and narrative films (including 1995's incendiary Kids) are portrayals of youth at its most ripely depraved. Bully is set in an affluent Florida suburb, where surfer Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro, again) is constantly hassled by his best friend, Bobby (Nick Stahl). In typical Clark fashion, these two—and the rest of their circle—basically spend their time screwing, smoking dope, and setting the local pervs all a-drool at quasi-gay dance contests. Until Marty's new girl Lisa (Rachel Miner), sick of Bobby's abuse, gets this unshakable notion that Bobby's gotta die. I always thought that the wake-up call aspect of Kids was a kind of sop to the moralists in the audience, an excuse for the voyeuristic Clark to gawk at all the fine poultry he laid out for display. Here, his morbid gazing actually gets him somewhere. His portrayal of teens lulled into utter amorality by false consciousness is genuinely compelling, and the movie's murder scene is a stomach-churning piece of cinematic virtuosity. Bully is very tough stuff, but it represents a triumph for Clark as a dramatic filmmaker; he finally achieves in the moving image the disorienting mix of beauty and horror that his best still photography conveys.