Three Popular Films by Jean-Pierre Gorin

Jean-Pierre Gorin first made his name as Jean-Luc Godard's collaborator during the latter's aggressively political and experimental phase in the late 1960s and early '70s. But as a solo director in his own right, Gorin helmed this trio of documentaries focusing on the people and culture of Southern California after moving there to assume a teaching position in the 1980s. The most famous and celebrated of these is Poto and Cabengo (1980), a portrait of 6-year-old twin sisters in San Diego who communicated with their own private language. As Gorin trains his camera on the girls and their working-class parents, he finds another story within the anthropological study as he chronicles the family's struggle to survive on the bottom economic rungs of the American Dream. Routine Pleasures (1986) contrasts the art and philosophy of Manny Farber—the legendary film critic who gave up writing to paint—with the members of a model train club in Del Mar; and My Crasy Life (1992) serves up a portrait of a Samoan street gang in Long Beach. In all three works, Gorin delivers personal narration as he attempts to understand these cultures as a foreign observer. This three-disc set from Eclipse, the extra-less line from Criterion includes informative notes by film critic and programmer Kent Jones. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)