A Giuseppe Giovanni presentation
of a Cine L'Mod production. Produced, directed, edited by JJ Martin. With: Kathleen Sperr, Sandy
Linter, Francesco Scavullo, Jade Hobson Charnin, Diane von Furstenberg,
Nancy Donahue, Robert Hilton, Vera Wang, Zoe Lund, Maurice Tannenbaum,
Harry King, Janice Dickinson, Lori Hamilton, Andrea Blanch, David Cohen. Current Reviews ... The
meteoric rise and bottomless fall of late-'70s/early '80s supermodel Gia
Carangi - already the subject of Michael Cristofer's widehy seen 1998
HBO telepic Gia, starring Angelina Jolie -- comes to the screen again
in JJ Martin's The Self-Destruction of Gia, a riveting docu that combines
archival footage of Carangi and new interviews with key members of her
social and professional circles. The result is an illuminating review
of a decadent era, and maybe one of the most unflinching studies of addiction
ever made. Reportedly, Martin was developing
his own narrative feature about Carangi when the HBO pic beat him to the
punch and he decided to focus his efforts on this docu instead. Martin's
film is the fuller, richer portrait of Carangi, by sheer virtue of him
offering up the real Carangi -represented primarily by excerpts from an
early '80s ABC news magazine interview. And there are unforgettable moments
here: Gia rambling, in a near-incoherent stupor, about her ambition to
become a cinematographer, stumbling over her pronunciation of Vittorio
Storaro's name in an endearingly sad way that you can't quite pinpoint
as stoned, tongue-tied or both - and something preternaturally sad that
comes through in just one of her offhand, seductive glances - something
that even Jolie's fine performance couldn't quite capture. Also riveting are Gia's therapist,
Robert Hilton, describing his odyssey through the heroin "shooting galleries"
of the Lower East Side to find Gia, sprawled on the floor of an abandoned
building, still dressed in a gown from a photo shoot earlier that day;
and Gia's mother, Kathleen Sperr, recounting in precise detail, the ravages
of AIDS on her daughter's body. But numerous key questions
remain unanswered about Carangi's self-destructive personality. Was she
the victim of an abusive father? Was she frightened by her own incredible
beauty and the privileges it bought her? Even. if Martin still had Gia
to ask, it's doubtful she would answer them. What makes Martin's film
so striking are the new interviews he has put together with those who
knew Gia both intimately and in passing - a list that includes such fashion-world
icons as Diane von Furstenberg and Vera Wang, as well as Gia's longtime
lover Sandy Linter. Shooting on grainy, 16mm black-and-white film stock,
Martin doesn't identify any of his subjects until the closing credits
roll, and the cumulative effect is something remarkable: talking heads
transformed into talking corpses. With few exceptions, these zombified
'80s fast-lane survivors don't just nostalgically recall their heroin-high
heydays, they pine for them. It's a sentiment made all
the more powerful by Martin's filming of one real talking corpse - actress
and screenwriter (and heroin enthusiast) Zoe Lund, who died in 1999 shortly
after completing this interview, and who here commands the screen with
an almost supernatural presence. As Lund describes the physical sensations
of shooting heroin into her body, she is like a woman describing her lover,
and there's such longing and titillation in her voice, and in the way
her whole body seems to curl up just thinking about the rush, that you
can't break her stone-eyed gaze. Martin has not just made a film about
Gia's self-destruction here, but about Zoe's and Sandy's and the rest
- the point being that those in Gia's circle who survived the 1980s were
not necessarily any luckier than those who didn't.
The
Self-Destruction of Gia
By SCOTT FOUNDAS —
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