Director
Matthew Bright loves young women, who are at the center of
his films of sex and violence. He also loves children’s stories.
In Confessions of a Trickbaby, which enjoyed
a prescreening at the American Cinematheque on July 15, 1999,
he tells a variant of the Hansel und Gretel fairy tale by
focusing on two girls, one of whom is drawn to a psychic in
Tijuana to cure her compulsion to murder; the other has a
compulsion to eat enormous quantities of food and thus agrees
to seek a cure as well. The film begins with the two sixteen-year-olds
(María Celedonio and Natasha Lyonne) in a juvenile prison.
They escape, thanks to wirecutters placed near the barbed
wire fence, and residents of a nearby house are killed so
that they can enjoy temporary shelter. Next, they take the
money from the couple and head for the California border so
that they can go to Tijuana. En route they are responsible
for more deaths. When they arrive in Tijuana, they find the
psychic (played by Vincent Gallo), who demands money to effect
a cure. Natasha rolls her clients to pay for the "treatment,"
but also beats them up. With no cure in sight, the Baja police
track them down. A bloody showdown ends the story. MH
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