Tarnation

Sometimes, a movie almost creates its own genre, truly sui generis as Roman Empire cineastes might have murmured. Synonyms for "in its own class" in dictionaries include "unique" and "peculiar". I can't imagine any moviegoer disagreeing that Jonathan Caouette's autobiographical documentary feature Tarnation is uniquely peculiar, a one-off cinematic experience and achievement that is unforgettable.

Caouette [JC from now on] is a young gay actor whose parents split before he was born. Following her childhood accident, JC's mother had been given electric shock therapy on and off for years, and he had been adopted by her parents, his psychologically disturbed grandparents, who had a grocery store in Texas. They indulged the boy by giving him a movie camera.

He made home movies from the age of 11, filming himself among other things as a range of neurotic sorely-troubled Southern women. An unashamed narcissist, he photographed many hours of his life, family and lovers. There is no clear explanation how he earned the money to pay for stock and processing; he spends more time acting for his own camera than professionally.

By the time he assembled his autobiopic, his mother had overdosed on lithium, he'd gone back to Texas from NYC to collect her and collate filmed recollections of her, the surviving grandparent and the father he'd located somehow. He acknowledges that he was frightened about the likelihood of developing mental problems himself.

Old out-of-focus home videos, very amateur interview sets and other odds and ends including telephone machine messages could not per se provide the tools for an engrossing documentary. They do when effective, mesmerising film editing splices them into and around a vast range of period film/TV clips, news items and montages. Large captions provide simple chronological notes, pauses, and on-screen commentary for a whirligig of images that often look like an acid trip or a riotous display of photo-shoppery, with appropriate musical soundtracks.

JC is seen developing from a wild Houston pretty boy into a low-key Eddie Izzard lookalike. He shows himself in a loving long-term gay relationship in NYC, and his only addictions seem to be those to his camera and his need to find reasons for his mother's madness.

Production credits suggest that a pair of successful independent directors enabled JC to complete his movie - Gus Von Sant and John Cameron Mitchell (for whom JC worked three years later as an actor on Shortbus). It is a movie that's worth watching, but not easy watching.