China Girl

There is little to recommend in Abel Ferrara’s reworking of West Side Story (1961)which was itself a re-working of Shakespeare’s 'Romeo And Juliet'. Everything about the film has been done before (and since) and to a much better effect. With big hair, shoulder pads and jackets with rolled up sleeves and an 80s pop-synth soundtrack peppered with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, along with a combination of hackneyed dialogue and bad acting, the film’s attempt at street cred at times approaches the laughable.

Ferrara sets the story in the border zone between lower Manhattan's Chinatown and Little Italy with Sari Chang and Richard Panebianco, two actors never again heard of, as the star-crossed lovers (Panebianco had a small role in Born On The 4th Of July,1989) . Despite the film looking quite good thanks to Bojan Bazelli's location photography, in every other respect there is no evident reason why it was ever made as Ferrara adds not a jot to the already substantial teen rebel genre in its many shapes and sizes.

 

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