Where the Day Takes You

Violence, drugs and prostitution. Life on the streets of Los Angeles is treacherous for the thousands of young people who run away from home. King and his gang try to protect each other as well as they can. Hollywood stands for a dream and a new life for the young runaways. But the reality of the streets is not much better than the lives they have left behind. Where the Day Takes You is a realistic and moving portrait of young people's struggle to survive.

Comment:
My favorite film by Martin Scorsese is Mean Streets. There is something about the nervous rhythm, the jargon and the seemingly random story line, which creates a very special feeling of authenticity. It was the favorite film of the maffia as well; they loved Scorsese, but laughed coarsely at The Godfather.
When I see Marc Rocco's Where the Day Takes You, I come to think of Scorsese. At Its best moments it can look like a version of Mean Streets ... l don't know anything about Rocco's background, but he has succeeded in creating a feeling of strong, almost documentary, presence, which he then breaks off with long musical parts
that create distance.
The film begins with black shadows movIng over a bluish black shimmering surface, a quick look into the camera ... An interrogation is gomg on: as if thiS were a documentation for the police. The definition of the
image comes and goes. We leave the police and come out into the street (the actual main theme of the film); children are running, a man lowers his glance to a table at a cafe (it is as if it were seen through the corner of the eye), car rides ... that which is close and intimate is continually mixed with something which breaks it off; we shift from a syringe used for heroin to the face of a comedian. The documentary shifts to Holly. Wood musical. The hero of the film is called King and he is the leader of a family of sorts, made up of petty thiefs, unemployed, drug addicts and whores that aIl live on the dumps of Hollywood.
King walks across James Dean's star on Sunset Boulevard. Dean, who was also called ''the human ashtray'' - a possible subtitle for this film.
I like the pictures that the director has cut in; the lighter that doesn't work ... The ketchup that slowly runs over the French fries. A nightly encounter among candles and garbage cans on fire. The most touch. ing picture: a man pays to touch the face of a young boy ... An image of tremendous loneliness.
The movie stars are ever present; like a dream-like zone nearby. A country as distant as Argentina.
If I didn't know anything else about the United States, this film would lead me to the conclusion that Los Angeles is a place next to hell.
Kristian Petri