Julien: Donkey Boy

The schizophrenic Julien works as assistant in a school for blind children and in his illness he swings between tenderness and violent outbursts. The firm point in his life is his family that consists of his pregnant sister Pearl, his brother Chris, who wants to be a wrestler, and a stern father. Harmony Korine's former film Gummo was both positively and negatively reviewed for its lack of a story and with julien donkey-boy Korine takes a further step away from the ordinary film world. It is filmed with a digital video camera and without a complete script, as ground for the shooting there were only a set of stage directions. There is improvisation most of the time and the scenes are loosely knitted. Like a super-dogma film it has sequences shot with completely hidden cameras when the main characters interact with passers-by. julien donkey-boy is also officially a Dogma film, the first American one. The main theme is how schizophrenia affects the whole family. As preparation for his role as Julian, Ewen Brenner (Spud in Trainspotting) worked as an art teacher to a group of mentally handicapped people. Another important source of inspiration to both Brenner and the whole story was Harmony Korine's schizophrenic maternal uncle Eddie. His mother has a role in the film as Julien's maternal grandmother. The film maker Werner Herzog plays the stern father.