The world is rotten. Everything is rubbish. Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. American teenagers, it would seem, like nothing better than a good moan, especially when it's aimed at nobody in particular. Yet Gregg Araki's final instalment of his teen apocalypse trilogy (following Totally F****d Up and Doom Generation) takes teenage whining to new depths of absurdity.
Nowhere is being hailed as the cinematic equivalent of Beverly Hills 90210 on acid, but the plot is much closer to an episode of Heartbreak High on alcopops. It's essentially a day in the life of some pretty vacant LA kids who spend their time and money desperately trying to be different from one another.
We follow Dark Smith (Keanu clone Duval) who loves his girlfriend Mel (True). She, however, lusts after her lesbian buddy Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Lucifer is the opposite of Egg (Sarah Lassez), a twee virgin who is raped by Baywatch's silky Jason Simmons playing a "silky teen idol". Dark, meanwhile, also has to cope with his mate Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz), whose boyfriend (Jeremy Jordan) is smacked-out on heroin, and search for distant admirer Montgomery (Nathan Bexton) who, as it turns out, has been abducted by aliens.
There's probably some deep postmodernist message going on but all you'll find are beautiful faces, hip cameos (Traci Lords, Debi Mazar, Heather Graham, Shannon Doherty) and Lego-style deco. Araki certainly has an eye for fashion and design, but his movies still look and feel like a film school exercise in pretence.
True, there are some dazzling scenes; a brilliant intercutting sex-scene; death by a Campbell's soup tin and a ridiculously absurd finale, but compared to the likes of Richard Linklater's endearing Dazed And Confused, Nowhere is completely lost up its own arse.