CiNEMERCATOR - John Waters Cry Baby 1990
Filmlover,
4 cinephiles:
Merthe Voorhoeve, Andreas van Riet,
Maaike Hasselaar & Elisabeth van Vliet,
each are programming 1 film per month.
That is 4 precious films per month!
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CiNEMERCATOR
doors open 19:30
start 20:00
ticket 3 Euro
nxt edition
24-9
Cry-Baby is musical, a lovestory and a comedy, as it's a satirical take on 1950s teen rebel movies. 'Cry-Baby' Walker, a motorcycle-riding bad boy with a golden singing voice falls for Allison, a girl from the clean-cut side of town. The film’s central conceit is the clash between 'Drapes' and 'Squares'- two rival youth tribes that could easily have been lifted from an exploitation film poster of the era. But Waters inverts the expected moral compass. The Drapes, outcasts by design, are vibrant, sexy, alive. They embody freedom in their music and their defiance. The Squares, society’s good children, are rigid, joyless, and cruel in their conservatism. Waters transforms the bad boy into the true moral center; Cry-Baby Walker, played with sly irony by Johnny Depp. Casting Depp, then still trapped in the teen-idol machinery of '21 Jump Street', was a masterstroke. Here was a pretty boy, reimagined as a parody of James Dean and Elvis Presley, but played with such earnest camp that he became both an icon and a critique of iconography. Waters knew how to wield an actor’s image against itself, and Depp’s career arguably launched into cinema proper from this role. The casting generally reflects Waters’ unique approach to film culture as a vast junk shop in which mainstream starlets and notorious outsiders can mingle. Cry-Baby is both; a love letter and a provocation. It loves the camp of cinema history too much to let it rest, and it mistrusts respectability enough to insist that real life, real fun, real freedom can only be found among the so-called trash. Seen this way, Waters is not merely parodying the 1950s teen film but rewriting its moral core, rescuing the outsiders, and turning them into the only ones truly worth watching.
This film is chosen by Merthe.
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