Synopsis
Cherished daughter of a billionaire oil-tycoon, Taelor, age 26, grew up in one of those rich neighborhoods of Houston, Texas. At 15, her father’s sudden and mysterious death tolls the bell of an idyllic childhood, entailing a fall into a reckless life filled with drug-abuse and firearms. Her portrait serves as an insight into modern-day decadent America lead by Donald Trump, new hero of a young and yet so lost generation.
A word from Tënk
With this flamboyant film that brings to mind the road-movie tradition (e.g. Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout) or those portraits of America sickened by its excesses (like the ones Hal Ashby made), Peduzzi pulls off the amazing feat of combining the power of the real world and the phantoms of fiction. Having lost all her bearings, off her head on tranquilisers, rich yet destitute, Taelor Ranzau rips through the night with her friends and their guns in their massive trucks. She burns the candle at both ends as she tries to swallow life’s bitter pill. She does what she can, confronting her uncle in a scene worthy of the Hollywood dramas of the 1950s. Like her, we’re at risk of ODing, half way between exasperation and compassion, watching the astounding dignity shown by this girl from today’s America, an America that was just about to elect Donald Trump. Scratch Massive’s music underlines the Lynch-like flashes dotted throughout this movie, and heralds what’s to come – Ghost Song, which opened the ACID line-up in the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and can be seen as the natural follow-up, the flip-side to Southern Belle.
Benoît Hické
Programmer and professor
