Gregg Araki's film, "Nowhere", is a joke. It is pointless, superficial, and sometimes perverse. But it is a funny joke. It is a one-track, one punch-line film, and its degree of success can really be measured in how long it manages to sustain that joke  to keep it all at once interesting, intriguing and (above most other things), funny. If you're looking for answers or messages within the subtext of this film (and I use the term "subtext" lightly), then you will probably not find much in the trashy, nihilistic jerks who populate this trashy, nihilistic vision of LA. What you see is what you get; there is little subtly ("God Help Us" a large sign cries at one point while the main characters cheerfully ignore it). And yet somehow, despite most odds, Araki actually manages to construct a film around interesting, affectionate characters, and then pit them in an environment of illicite sex and drugs, disillusionment and disaffection, all while maintaining a level of pathos that (for the most part) is genuine. This is not an easy balancing act to achieve. To its credit, it manages to sustain this act for almost all of its 87 minuet run time.<br /><br />"Nowhere" seems to borrow heavily from the literature of Bret Easton Ellis. Its characters  racy and ridiculously attractive 18-year-old LA yuppies, disciples one and all of pop-tart culture and rejectors of the status quo  could be lifted from the campus of "Rules of Attraction", or the drunken house-parties of "Less Than Zero". (Frankly, this film could almost be the film adaptation of "Rules of Attraction"  and honestly, this film does an infinitely better job of communicating the undiluted themes, ideas and characterisations of the novel than the actual film adaptation managed). Like "Less Than Zero", the plight of central character Dark seems to begin and end with who he's sleeping with, who he'd like to be sleeping with, and who he realistically can sleep with  all the while looking for a way of bettering himself in the belief that unconditional love should not mean loving everyone with a pulse just for the heck of it. Unlike the central character of "Less Than Zero", Dark doesn't have a comparison to this life on which to better himself  like the rest of his friends, he makes do with that he has: drugs, sex, and a video camera.<br /><br />The plot, such as it is, centres of a bunch of hedonistic and supremely superficial teenagers, all of whom have various attachments with each other, and appear to search (with varying degree of conviction and success) for an emotional connection with another human being. Some take advantage of the world and their place in it  others are taken advantage of. Some try to make sense of it, others to ignore it, and even more opt to simply go with the flow. In the space of 12 hours, a penultimate party will be attended, relationships will be tested, changed, negotiated and destroyed, and some of them will die. All of them are curiously bisexual, which does nothing to serve the narrative except to throw a few predictability curve balls into the narrative drive. This is hardly a criticism  while still on the unpredictability drive, Araki even throws in a large reptilian alien, just to see what happens. (Think "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and you'll be on the right track).<br /><br />While my plot summation may seem somewhat conventional, this film is far from convention. Araki's film is like a more literal adaptation of any of Ellis's novels. What his characters don't say about themselves physically he depicts for the audience in saturated colour, surreal sets and staging, and impossible lighting effects. (The walls of each character's room are a fantastic projection of themselves: in one, Dark, our pseudo-protagonist, has a massive mural of himself holding a gun to his forehead; on another, a suicidal rock'n'roller has angry lines of text printed endlessly around the room). The film looks like one big drug-induced nightmare of colour and light and is strangely beautiful to look at. To say there is a hallucinogenic mixture of extremes would be a colossal understatement.<br /><br />And, come to think of it, his characters are themselves reflections of these extremes: from the almost stoner-drawl of Dark to the palpably naïve, virginal Montgomery, to the insanely Bonnie/Clyde antics of Shad and Lilith and over-the-top pairing of dominatrix-like personas Kriss and Kozy Araki's characters are almost parodies of themselves. And, with all good parodies, we laugh at them as well as with them.<br /><br />The film is very funny, a little shocking (but not for the reasons you'd assume), genuinely surprising (in a sick, twisted, predictable kind of way) and wonderfully frivolous. Looking for any great answers to universal questions in this film would be like trying to draw blood from a stone. It assumes to be nothing more than it is, and assumes that the audience does, too. It is an ensemble piece, and all of them are good. In the end, it is a deliberately trashy, superficial throw-away film that won't enhance the quality of your life or make you a better person. But what Araki also manages is to elicit an emotional response from his audience, even amid all this hyperkinetic chaos and frenetic drug-fuelled sex.<br /><br />Even though he may take us down familiar roads and into slightly unconventional territory, "Nowhere" remains a stubbornly unique vision of youth and pop-culture. I, for one, found the ending both touching and hilarious  it's the ultimate punch-line to the one, big joke. But it's a joke you either get, or you don't.<br /><br />***1/2 out of *****. That's ******* out of **********.<br /><br />Sure there are alien abductions, but man, take a chill pill