THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Korine’s Bunny Boy is a mute with knuckle tattoos and frisky pink ears: he messes around with an accordion and skateboards through the mayhem. ‘He looks like queer rabbit!’ hollers a pre-teen cowboy in a junkyard. With its repertory of eccentrics suggesting out -of-work carnival folk, weird swerves, and a mood of trippy disorientation, the garbage-strewn world seen in Gummo is like a Southern Gothic renovation of Wonderland. Bacon, fried to bark, is glued to bathroom walls and lynched Barbies hang from the ceiling. Korine gets high on the derelict freak scene surrounding him. There’s a black dwarf and two cute albino sisters; here’s a redneck tweaker destroying a chair. The town is under a malign spell: Korine’s films always happen in a magical environment. Lunacy breaks out, warped beauties run amok.

Fox/Monster, 2017