JACK AND DIANE

When delicate, doll-like Diane meets the distinctly different Jack, a faux-bad girl skate boarder, on a dreamy summer day in New York, they fall in love. It’s sweet, hip and gay, perhaps a first love for both. Diane’s innocence begins to open tomboy Jack’s tough-skinned heart, but Diane is so overwhelmed by her powerful new feelings that she panics. Her unspoken turmoil expresses itself through slimy things and terrifying monsters, causing violent changes to her body, as she transforms herself into a flesh eater. Then Jack discovers that Diane is leaving for Paris at the end of the summer to study fashion design and heartbroken, pushes her away.

The injection of pop-up horror sequences, directed by the Quay brothers, surging forth violently in this otherwise gentle story of young love, is as striking as the contrast between Jack and Diane. A genuinely moving, charming and frightening film, the cast is excellent, especially Riley Keough in the role of Jack. Look out for Kylie Minogue as Tara.

Bradley Rust Gray’s first feature film Salt won the Berlinale’s Caligari Film Prize for Innovative Filmmaking in 2003, and his short film Hitch in 2000 was a Sundance prize winner. He also signed the feature film The Exploding Girl in 2009