Wetlands

2013 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Teenager Helen sees an anal wound as an opportunity to get her parents back together. Meanwhile, she has a friend, and there's a nurse she likes.

This is like artsier gross-out comedy, and I think there's probably something I'm completely missing. I guess you have to call Carla Juri's brave as she trudges through shit in this movie, sometimes literally. I really liked the performance actually. There's a surprising emotional arc with the character who, at least for the first half of the movie, is a skateboarding picture of apathy and angst. For a character so completely eccentric and, well, shockingly disgusting, she kind of feels like a colorful cliche. However, as you piece together her backstory, mostly from flashbacks, there's surprising depth to Helen. Unfortunately, I really didn't like the character--or really any of the characters--at all. These weren't people with whom I wanted to trudge through that shit--again, sometimes literally because this movie's groddy to the max--for over an hour and a half. My brother, who recommended this to me, compared it to Amelie and Run, Lola, Run, and those are probably appropriate comparisons. The style's vibrant enough, definitely creative visual storytelling, but you kind of have to wonder what the point is. This almost bludgeons you with taboos with numerous shots of blood, ejaculate, fecal matters, skateboarding, and pubes. You almost want to hop in the shower after watching this, and although I've never really considered myself a prude, I just didn't get the point of it all unless the point was just to create this shocking character. It's definitely not for the squeamish, climaxing (literally) pornographically in the relayed pizza circle jerk fantasy she shares with Robin the nurse, another character I didn't really understand or like. A sequence that, of course, is accompanied by "The Blue Danube Waltz," which makes sense because most people have trouble masturbating on food unless there's a little Strauss in the background. I think my biggest problem with this was that the storytelling was a little too loose, and I think that hurt any impact the climactic revelation could have delivered. I didn't quite understand a scene on a diving platform or really why any of the scenes with her friend were even in the movie. There's a subplot featuring a scrawny drug dealer that kind of seemed unnecessary, too. Too many loose ends, and I really had trouble connecting with Helen like I did Amelie.

Wilhelm Scream--we hear one while the characters are watching something on television.