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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Dirty Girl

DIRTY GIRL written and directed by Abe Sylvia, with Juno Temple, Jeremy Dozier and Dwight Yoakam. 106 minutes. An Alliance release. Opens Friday (October 21). For venues and times, See Movies. Rating: NNN


You can tell Abe Sylvia has a theatre background. Dirty Girl has the big, brassy energy of a Broadway musical.

But it’s a road movie set in the 80s with a kick-ass soundtrack. Small-town Oklahoma teen misfits Clarke (Jeremy Dozier), the bullied high school queer, and Danielle (Juno Temple), the school’s sexually precocious dirty girl, take off together when her mother (Milla Jovovich) decides to marry a creepy Christian (William H. Macy) and Clarke’s angry dad (Dwight Yoakam) and meek mom (Mary Steenburgen) find out he’s gay.

Sylvia makes the most of his great cast of character actors, but it’s Temple who’s the revelation here, all fucked-up sexy and cruel yet kind to Clarke at the same time.

The movie does have some tonal problems, sometimes shifting irritatingly from gritty to melodramatic to farcical.

But it’s got a big heart.

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