Like anything and everything surrounding the 25-year old filmmaker, Harmony Korine’s new film Julien Donkey-Boy is controversial.  To his critics, the film will be a welcome departure from the crassness they saw in his last feature, Gummo.  But to his fans, myself included, Korine’s subdued maturity is a mixed blessing.

Julien Donkey-Boy is the story of a twenty-something schizophrenic and his dysfunctional family.  Julien’s father, played by Werner Herzog, is eccentric and abusive.  He lives in a self absorbed world where he listens to classical music in a gas mask and offers his youngest son $10 to wear his dead mother’s wedding dress, claiming “You are the only one who looks like her.”  Julien’s sister, played ethereally by Chloe Sevigny, is seven months pregnant and apt to sing bible hymns.  His youngest brother is held to impossible standards by his father, standards he attempts to achieve without the slightest dissent.  The film follows Julien in his daily travails, some of which include a close-knit community of disabled peers with whom he sings, bowls, and ice skates.

We learn that Julien’s mother has died some time ago, and it is speculated that perhaps this event sparked his schizophrenia.  In one of the more powerful scenes of the film, Julien is seen calling his mother on the telephone as his sister impersonates her on the other end of the phone.  There is little explanation of this exchange, and none is needed.

Those who found Gummo to be uproariously funny at the same time it was passionately sad, will find little in Julien as essentially moving.  While it does deal with taboo subjects, it does so in such a delicate way that it lacks a certain edge found in the earlier film.  The ups and downs of the film are more even keeled, and cause for a more cohesive film – but a film that often lacks the deep resonance found in Gummo. 

What it does offer, though, is Korine’s incontrovertible talent for capturing sublime moments of beauty.  Beauty is the hero of this film, and Julien’s reverie of it – a reverie that is surely a surrogate for Korine’s own.  It is expressed in the image of an ice skater repeated throughout the film, an image that is outstandingly gorgeous. 

It is also expressed as Pearl, Julien’s sister as played by Sevigny with a pregnant glow.  The image of her dancing with an umbrella on a gray and rainy day is quietly sublime, and Korine shows her to us as both muted and passionate.  In her we find a confused love for Julien that is lustful and parental at the same time – a love that for all its taboo is nevertheless beautiful.

The weak link of the film, I am sorry to say, was Werner Herzog.   Herzog just doesn’t let his character get off the ground as anything more than a symbol of cruelty and dysfunction. 

This is in stark comparison to Ewen Bremner’s Julien, who is as believable as it gets.  His dialogue incisively captures that of a schizophrenic, at times leaving you to wonder if Julien Donkey-Boy isn’t a documentary.  If it weren’t for the recognition of Chloe Sevigny and Werner Herzog, it very well could be.

Believable, that is, until the end of the film.  In an unfortunate fumble, Korine falls back on convention to rely on a formulaic plot twist that wraps up the film.  It is a disappointing end to an otherwise valiant effort.

What remains experimental in Korine’s film is not his subject matter, but his way of presenting it.  The storyboard of Julien Donkey-Boy may be linear and the plot twists formulaic, but the visuals that accompany it are anything but.  The result is a visually fascinating romp through the neighborhoods and lives that surround Julien.

While Julien is by far his most sophisticated and cohesive film, one can’t help but wonder if this newfound maturity stands to kill what is most beloved in Korine – his unabashed pursuit of the non-linear, inexplicable beauty of life in its glorious weirdness.   

Julien Donkey-Boy is written and directed by Harmony Korine.  Is stars Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog, Evan Neumann and Joyce Korine (as Julien’s Grandma).  It is filmed in compliance with Dogma ‘95.  It is playing in San Francisco at the Lumiere Theatre.