Rolling with los Ramones
Wassup Rockers
Directed by Larry Clark
Brace yourself: although they're in a Larry Clark film, the East L.A. punk-skater-chicos of Wassup Rockers are good kids. Likable and happy-go-lucky, even. Mourning an innocent buddy slain in a drive-by, dealing with poverty, racism and puberty, they could be as sad and pathologically vicious as their peers in Kids and Bully. Yet they steer clear (while on skateboards) of drugs, hooch, STDs and other nihilistic-teen cliches. The most violent crimes they commit: stealing a jerky cop's sandwich and crashing a cocktails-and-cupcakes pool party in the Hills. They treat one another with familial kindness (some are blood relations, some aren't) and uppity bigots with good-natured indifference. Praise Joey Ramone, whose skinny jeans, greasy hair and shruggy mellowness they emulate as skaters with a band on the side. (Spanish-screaming punk rockers propel the buzzed-about soundtrack.) A vapid hipster even calls them "the Mexican Ramones"-apt, except they're Ecuadorian and Guatemalan. And Jonathan, Eddie, Kiko, Carlos, Porky and Milton (aka Spermball) probably laugh and frolic on playgrounds more than the Ramones ever did.
Has Larry Clark gone soft? Not exactly. It's just that this goofy posse of discovered non-actors, essentially playing themselves, couldn't possibly inspire a teenage-wasteland nightmare. Skating one long, mildly eventful day from their barrio all the way to Beverly Hills and back again, our boy-men heroes, age 13 to 17, aren't rolling toward doom or dramatic self-discovery. Instead, this fictionalized, meandering road trip gently unearths a tiny youth sub-culture that's fascinating largely because of its indomitable optimism. These kids contentedly skate on the margins wherever they go: in their hood, where they defy Latino and hip-hop stereotypes, and in the rich, white enclave they trespass, where they're mistaken for dangerous criminals and/or the hired help.
Clark (still being Clark) obsesses about their sexuality-but with shocking tenderness and subtlety. His camera first approaches them sleeping and drooling on bunk beds and couches in the morning light, with fleeting close-ups of their sprouting pubic hair, acne and crooked teeth, to be awoken sweetly by their mothers (one's a maid, another's a stripper). These shots are deeply intimate and revealing, so much more so than any of the graphic sex scenes hurled onscreen in Bully.
As they skate to school and jam afterwards, the boys mumble on and on about sex, as most teens (and grownups) do. Their range of experiences and vocabulary also feels authentic: dreamy Jonathan and charismatic Kiko have already overcome awkwardness and pick up girls effortlessly; others are addicted to porn but clueless with the real thing.
The closest Rockers gets to raunchy brutality is the off-screen sex between a squat, micro-skirted local girl, maybe 12, who offers herself to everyone and anyone and gets some takers in the bushes. This surprising restraint is a reprieve as exhilarating as the sunny, punk-powered ramble that dominates the film.
The boys leisurely roll through the multi-culti sprawl of L.A. County until they end up on the golden side of the tracks in Beverly Hills, wiping out on the steps of BH High School. As they amuse or frighten one deluded white person after the next, their sojourn loses some of its immediacy; this crew's authentic and absorbing enough without the obvious contrast of Fake Hollywood/Beverly Hill caricatures. A farcical appearance by Janice Dickinson as a drunken, lusty, doomed Hollywood wife breaks the tone entirely. It snaps back once the boys and the punky guitars get rolling again.
About their skating: none are exceptionally graceful on four wheels. They usually crash hard when attempting elaborate jumps and tricks; who wouldn't in tight, tight jeans? But they make it home in one piece, scraped up but still smiling. As politicos continue to debate the citizenship of many East Angelenos and their brethren, these mobile "Mexican Ramones," nonchalantly busting zip codes, invisible borders and assumptions, redefine American eclecticism and rebellion. Clark's reinvigoration is ours, too.