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"These violent delights have violent ends." Little Italy and Chinatown are the warring tribes in this Manhattan modernization of the Bard, the star-cross'd lovers are a baby-faced pizza boy (Richard Panebianco) and a Chinese maiden (Sari Chang), introduced at the underground funk fête. (It moves swiftly from dance to brawl, and with the same expressionistic brio.) The gangland netherworld of wiseguys and triad thugs is severely symmetrical, slick bosses (Robert Miano, James Hong), disapproving brothers (James Russo, Russell Wong) and bellicose cronies (David Caruso, Joey Chin) mirror each other across the neighborhood divine. Against this geometry Abel Ferrara poses the euphoria of the callow sweethearts, his camera seizes the couple's quickening pulse as they step into a nightclub, "nothing but you and me" in the middle of a crowd. Brutality and romance are equally heightened, equally direct—a musclehead carved up with machetes segues naturally into Romeo fumblingly courting Juliet at a diner with an improvised bouquet. Brawlers wear black and strut through a spooky-blueish night, lovemaking on a mattress in an abandoned building emanates a seedy glow, police officers on horseback are like visitors from another dimension. Mean Streets figures in the San Gennaro pageantry, though it's the Nicholas Ray of Hot Blood that's closest to the lyricism here. (As with Ray, Ferrara's desire to do a musical palpitates throughout: Verdi and Puccini co-exist with Run-D.M.C. and David Johansen.) "Our responsibility is to control our children," one capo says to another, the children revolt and are punished in the screen's most vibrant visualization of the tale's account of feverish love ("Too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn"). With Judith Malina, Paul Hipp, Doreen Chan, and Randy Sabusawa.
--- Fernando F. Croce |