With its fascination with eccentricity and dysfunction, John Maringouin’s debut bears echoes of Jonathan Caouette’s $200 bio-doc Tarnation (2003).
It could be seen as a cinematic act of revenge, as Maringouin exposes the hell into which drug-addicted artist Johny Roe (the father who threatened to kill the director and his mother 25 years earlier) has descended.
But a trace of compassion begins to permeate, and while the stylised (and strikingly edited) imagery is discomfiting, Maringouin seems more interested in understanding and reconciling with his dad than in exploiting his psychological decrepitude.