Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 138: Sun May 27

River's Edge (Hunter, 1986): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.20pm


This 35mm presentation, which is also being screened on May 23rd (details here),  is part of the 'Lost in America' season at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details of the season, taglined 'The Other Side of Reagan's 80s' here.

Chicago Reader review:
Something very odd about this 1986 feature: a teen problem drama fighting David Lynch battles with its own right-thinking consciousness. Teenpic auteur Tim Hunter (
Tex) isn't one to shirk his sentimental lessons, but the cautionary outlines of his story, about a gang of high school drifters who try to cover up a murder by a hulking 16-year-old psycho, have a hard time pushing through the surreal atmospherics of the images (by Blue Velvet cinematographer Frederick Elmes: maybe they should have called this Nightmare on Elmes Street or Blue Velveteen?). It's not easy keeping track of all the contradictory tensions, and the film seems forever on the verge of spinning totally out of control, though whose
 control—Hunter's? Elmes's? anyone's?—it's hard to say. Still, it's more a success than a failure, if only because the confusions are so protean.
Pat Graham


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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