Totally Fucked Up

Totally Fucked Up (censored title Totally F***ed Up in many references and publicity material) is a 1993 American drama film written and directed by Gregg Araki. The first installment of Araki's Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, it is considered a seminal entry in the New Queer Cinema genre.

Totally Fucked Up chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six gay adolescents who have formed a family unit and struggle to get along with each other and with life in the face of various major obstacles. Araki classified it as "a rag-tag story of the fag-and-dyke teen underground....a kinda cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick."

Plot

The plot is concerned with six teenagers, four of whom are gay men, the other two a "traditional" lesbian couple. The plot is spliced with segments of other material and occasional tangents not central to the plot, but it mainly follows a linear structure. Araki has constructed the film in 15 parts, which is described in the opening titles.

The film details the lives and romances of the six characters, before ultimately culminating at a climax at which there is an epilogue-like reaction from five of the characters before the film ends and the blue font credits appear.

Cast

• James Duval as Andy
• Roko Belic as Tommy
• Susan Behshid as Michele
• Jenee Gill as Patricia
• Gilbert Luna as Steven
• Lance May as Deric
• Alan Boyce as Ian
• Craig Gilmore as Brendan
• Nicole Dillenberg as Dominatrix

Style

The film makes extensive use of a handheld video camcorder, which one of the characters uses to provide insight into the lives of other characters through interview-like discussion. The technique became popular throughout the 1990s, evident also in such later films as Reality Bites (1994) American Beauty (1999) and The Blair Witch Project (1999).

DVD release

The film was released on Region 1 DVD on June 28, 2005.

See also

• Gregg Araki
• The Doom Generation (1995)
• Nowhere (1997)

References

External links

• Totally Fucked Up at the Internet Movie Database
• Totally Fucked Up at AllMovie
• Totally Fucked Up at Box Office Mojo
• Totally Fucked Up at Rotten Tomatoes