I have just finished watching, for the umpteenth time, the short film Act Da Fool, by critically acclaimed independent filmmaker Harmony Korine. With each viewing, I am more flabbergasted.
Set in a Nashville housing project, as well as a school for the blind—and “a school for kleptomaniacs”—the film is apparently the centerpiece for Proenza Schouler’s Fall 2010 clothing line, introduced last week to coincide with Fashion Week in New York City.
The short opens with some Proenza Schouler pieces hanging from the limbs of southern trees, bringing to mind the “Strange Fruit” of which Billie Holiday sang.
With a debris-strewn, filthy backdrop, five beautiful African American teenage girls, rocking outfits that likely cost more than they were paid, provide a voyeur’s window into their pitiable existence. “It just had to be that way,” insists Korine, when asked about the setting.
“We are a gang of fools. We can act like wild animals,” the young narrator tells us.
Throughout, the young girls are swigging 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, in one scene standing on a railroad track. One girl spray-paints “COKE” onto the trash dumpster, while the narrator theorizes that the earth is a “ball of s—… and everyone is gonna die sooner or later,” which explains why she “loves cigarettes sooo much.”
Near the beginning, in a dimly-lit, creepy scene, she is seated beside her “father.” “I used to call my dad Saint Nick,” she shares, “cause he fat as hell and he always walking around with a red hat on.” I guess this is supposed to explain the fact that the man, clad in a dingy “wife-beater” shirt—and inexplicably swinging a loaf of bread like a pendulum—is wearing a Santa hat.
