Review: How To Talk To Girls At Parties

Image courtesy of A24.

There's a line of dialogue about halfway through John Cameron Mitchell's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" that aptly sums up the picture. Enn (Alex Sharp), a punk rocker in 1977 in south London's Croydon, has taken home a girl named Zan (Elle Fanning) whom he met at a party. As it turns out, she's an alien from a conformist race that is spending time in England before it plans to carry out a ritual in which the adults - symbolism alert! - eat their young.

Enn is describing a fictional cartoon character that he has created known as Virus Boy that he draws in the zine he writes with his two mates, John (Ethan Lawrence) and Vic (Abraham Lewis). After Enn describes the nature of the zine and what Virus Boy stands for - nonconformity - Zan tells him, "There's contradiction in your metaphor, but I am moved by it." To an extent, this is how one could describe Mitchell's film, although my being moved by it varied from scene to scene.

In terms of being energetic, "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" delivers in spades. There's an opening scene in which Enn and his two pals ride through their neighborhood, drawing shouts from neighborhoods and eggs from bullies. The frenetic, jerky camerawork is accompanied by The Damned's "New Rose" to open the picture on a note of hyperactivity - or, as Zan calls it, "the punk."

Enn and his pals start their night at a punk rock show where a band known as The Dyschords go wild and Queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman) watches over the realm. Despite a decent supporting nod from Kidman, hers is the only character that feels a little, shall we say, forced.

Following the show, Enn and company stumble upon a bizarre party taking place in a large house filled with groups of people - who turn out to be aliens - wearing matching Spandex-like outfits. Some of them are taking part in peculiar acrobatics, while others sit and talk and a third group engages in some kinky copulation. It is here that Enn meets Zan. She is a member of one of the less outrageous groups of extraterrestrial beings and she is immediately taken with Enn, who promises to introduce her to "the punk." She flees with him, much to the chagrin of her alien overlords, and spends the next two days in his company.

One of the issues with "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" is that it's a bit all over the place, without ever landing on a guiding theme or concept. It has a lot of energy, but seems unsure what to do with it. Mitchell's directorial debut, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," also focused on music - glam rock - and was flashy, but more focused. His latest picture is more similar to "Shortbus," which took a unique approach for a movie about sex, although its pieces never quite added up.

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties" is occasionally sweet, often raucous and frequently funny - my favorite moment was watching Lawrence's character observe the strange goings-on at the original alien party, but there's also a good laugh to be found when Kidman's character and a group of punks raid the aliens' house, only to be stopped by the acrobatic group.

The picture also features some interesting imagery, some of which appears to have been inspired by the acid trip hallucinatory visuals from "2001: A Space Odyssey." One disappointment is that for a film about punk rock, all we get is that opener from The Damned, one Velvet Underground song and, otherwise, just a bunch of Dyschords tunes. All in all, Mitchell's latest picture is fitfully entertaining, but tonally inconsistent. There's much to like, but it never successfully comes together as it should.