Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1990)
Earlier this year I made a promess to myself and my readers that I would tackle a list of directors that I’ve never seen a movie they directed. This list includes many great and recognized names : from Maurice Pialat to Ermano Olmi and from Russ Meyer to Glauber Rocha. One of the names on this list that intrigued me the most was John Waters. From his thrash counter culture films of the 1970’s and 1980’s starring the transsexual Divine to his more mainstream pieces like Hairspray and Cry-Baby. At first, I knew it was a Grease parody and a tribute to the teenage exploitation films of the 1950’s. It is also a pastiche of Elvis Prestley movies. After reading these lines one could easily put the label kitsch here. Well, one cannot be more right. It is a film that is not taken itself too seriously while involving a great laugh and a good fun. So it is far from being high-brow and not that far to low-brow. However, it is not as trashy as his Pink Flamingos where scenes of hardcore sex and feces eating are presented.
