Tarnation is a mosaic of personal video, snapshots and phone messages that illustrate one youngsters’ troubled upbringing amid twenty years of family strife. Jonathan Couette spent a whopping $218.32 to assemble footage on his boyfriend’s computer. Having trimmed the ensuing three hour epic into a manageable 88 minutes, he earned the approval of Gus Van Sant and caught the eye of Sundance.

Tarnation is a skilfully composed account that claims to be the new face of documentary. Others see it as a self-indulgent vanity project designed as a calling card for the precocious Texan. It is also therapy for a man who needed to exorcise demons. The question is whether it’s necessary to attend the session with him. Couette considers that simply filming his disturbed family is, of itself, enough. He doesn’t feel the need to take a stand, shape a view or give us much information to form our own opinions. It’s an alienating process that severely diminishes the impact of his work. Revelations are delivered complete rather than emanating from the film’s narrative or emotional heart. We learn little about Couette’s relationship with his mother, despite it being at the core of his life, and therefore, film. She is often manipulated, no more deliberately than during an attempted overdose.

The film is a self-satisfied piece that nimbly skirts all the issues it raises to say very little about anything much at all. Tarnation is not so much documentary as it is a kinetic installation that broke free of its local Contemporary Art Museum.

// COLIN FRASER