Make some sense of Repo Chick trailer

When (massive spoiler alert!!) Otto and Miller soared away into the LA night sky in the luminescent Chevy Malibu at the denouement of Alex Cox's 1984 oddity Repo Man, a sequel seemed an unlikely proposition. A sequel is what we have got though - albeit more a spiritual than a narrative one – and the new trailer for this follow-up, entitled Repo Chick, has just surfaced online.

Flip you melon farmer! Flip you! Ah, the TV edit of Repo Man. What a wonderfully beguiling pleasure from this Indie Movies writer's youth. All the cult value of the theatrical cut – mono-eyed J. Frank Parnell blowing highway patrolman out of their boots with the trunk of his automobile; “John Wayne was a fag”; all those punk tunes – yet with extra soap, warm water and sponging applied to the interiors of Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton's filthy mouths. Yet as great a teen treat as Repo Man was, it appeared destined to remain a standalone triumph, with its labyrinthine idiosyncrasies appearing to mark it as the very epitome of the cinematic one-off. Which to an extent it remains. Because writer-director Cox's demi-sequel Repo Chick dispenses with Otto and Bud and the streets of Los Angeles, replacing them with actress Jaclyn Jonet, his long-time collaborator Miguel Sandoval, and a digitally-created vision of modern America.

And what is Repo Chick actually about? Well, according to its director's own website, it is 'a story of plastic model railroad people living a precarious tabletop existence'. Yes, admittedly that does not make a whole lorryload of sense. But that's not a problem because neither does the trailer. Cinematical first drew our attention to this teaser, and you can watch it for yourself below.

Er, yeah. That was our first reaction too. But, to paraphrase the Mighty Thor, thoust who art too hasty to judge doth risk missing point of yonder movie, by the beard of Odin! As you may have surmised from the trailer, the story of Repo Chick involves spoilt Paris Hilton-alike Pixxi de la Chase (Jonet) being banished from the family funding trough, and forced to try and make ends meet as a repossessions agent. Under the tutelage of Sandoval's Gray, Pixxi swiftly exhibits a ruthless aptitude for her new trade in a post-credit crunch US which is simply littered with defaulting citizens. In Cox's words: 'Repo Chick is my salute to GMAC [General Motors Acceptance Corporation] and the other wealthy corporations which always manage to convert crisis into opportunity. Hats off to you!'.

Echoes of Repo Man's hunt for the Chevy Malibu can then be detected as the plot proceeds to put Pixxi on the trail of an antique train carriage being used by environmental terrorists to ferry missiles. Clearly, the political subtext of Repo Man - perhaps most notable in the shape of Otto's zombiefied parents, with their distaste for godless communism abroad and liberal humanism at home and their enthusiasm for the brave new '80s world of tele-evangelism – has lurched to the surface in Repo Chick, although in terms of genre, Cox (one imagines with a twinkle in his eye) compares the two movies thusly: 'Repo Man was a punk-rock science fiction film. Repo Chick is a clock-ticking thriller with shades of The Manchurian Candidate and Railroad Modeller.'

Plot, politics, and all that jazz aside, the thing that has tongues wagging over Repo Chick is the look of the film. It's shot nearly entirely on green screen and Cox is unapologetic for his embrace of digital technology: 'I was trying to find a way of making a film that was as dramatically flexible, and as visually striking, as a Doctor Strange comic book, or Holiday's illustrations for The Hunting of the Snark, or an R. Crumb or Freak Brothers cartoon... green screen provides an almost-total absence of limitations... the film remains dynamic throughout, as the backgrounds appear, and mutate.'

Still unconvinced? Mmmm, those visuals do take some getting over, don't they? Visually striking they sure are. But so is an 48-stone naturist with a back hair rug that a wookie would be proud of. However, in spite of the retina-searing aesthetic, what little early critical word on Repo Chick that has seeped out has not been wholly negative; Variety delivered a review after the film screened at Venice last September praising it for its 'wacky blend of leftist, anti-establishment politics, eye-searing colors, outre costumes and manic overacting.' Personally, the trailer reminded this hack of of a micro-budget version of Richard Kelly's utterly bonkers, utterly terrible Donnie Darko follow-up, Southland Tales. But maybe not quite as terrible.  

Three final nuggets of information for you to digest:

1. Toe-treading title aside, the upcoming Jude Law science fiction flick Repo Men has no connection with either of Cox's Repo movies.

2. Repo Chick has apparently been co-produced by no lesser a revered filmmaking personage than David Lynch.

3. If you want to check out a brilliant prior Sandoval/Cox team-up then you could do far worse than watching Death and the Compass for free right here on Indie Movies Online.