Tarnation film review

certificate_15

TARNATION

Jonathan Caouette's self-made documentary about his troubled upbringing has won a number of awards since it first appeared on the festival scene last year, and deservedly so. There's never been a film quite like Tarnation, in which Caouette pieces together the home video he has been shooting for most of his life and creates a fascinating study of the modern American dysfunctional family. It's no surprise that such heavy hitters as Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell came on board as executive producers as its underground and arthouse feel has an explicit connection with such works as Elephant and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Born in Texas in the 1970s, Caouette's life seemed at first the picture of happiness. His beautiful - although single - mother Renee was the star of many modelling and fashion assignments, and his grandparents ran a successful business. But when Jonathan was still a young boy his mother began to show signs of mental instability. On the advice of a doctor friend, his grandparents sent her for years of electro-shock therapy, compounding her situation rather than helping it. Most of this is shown through the use of family photos of the time, and rather than using a voiceover, Caouette chooses surtitles to explain the family's history.

But by the time he was a teenager Caouette was armed with an early video camera and chronicles his family's life. Although he loves his grandparents, he can't understand their choice of treatment for his mother who we know see as an occasionally lucid but more often than not kooky character. The effect on the growing boy himself is also here for all to see: a confused youngster who is coming to terms with his homosexuality, developing an interest in underground art (his early underground films are highly amusing), and a passion for musicals - most notably his high school mounting of a musical version of David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

Most of this comes across as a weird mix of Rushmore and Capturing the Friedmans, with Caouette unafraid to explore his own growing mental instability. Deciding that his life needed changing he moved to New York in the mid 90s and began a new life as a modestly successful actor. The film's final sequence, in which he reunites with his mother and the absent father from the 70s is both uncomfortable and strangely uplifting.