Cannes, France - In US director Gus van Sant's Paranoid Park, which premiered at the Cannes film festival Monday, skateboarding is a dream-like world for helping its teenager adherents to escape the dullness of American suburban life.
However, when young skateboarder Alex accidentally kills a security guard as part of a visit to a legendary skateboarding venue called Paranoid Park he suddenly finds himself not just confronting the ramifications of what happened.
He is also forced to face up to the reality of the arrival of adulthood and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
'Where will I be in six or seven years? I could be fighting in Iraq,' said van Sant at a press conference attempting to capture the mood of the young characters.
To an extent Paranoid Park is a rite of passage for the young characters in the film as they prepare to leave their teenage years and enter adulthood with all the responsibilities that accompany it.
In van Sant's movie, Alex, played by Gabe Nevins, keeps holding back from joining the other skaters on the Paranoid Park circuit. He feels he is just not up to it.
Set in Portland, Oregon, Paranoid Park is also based on a real place, which is one of the world's leading venues for skateboarders.
Paranoid Park is a 'scary' place, one the skateboarders explain during the movie. It was where drug dealers and prostitutes previously worked and was built illegally by 'hard-core freaks.'
It is also a place that is surrounded by urban myths. There are dead bodies buried in the concrete, Alex is told by one of the street kids that have turned Paranoid Park into their home.
The 54-year-old van Sant builds his story in the film through a series of flashbacks and forward flashes against the backdrop of an eclectic blend of music.
This is a world of teenage indifference to major issues such as the war in Iraq and where parents no longer play much of a role in the lives of the teenager characters.
The parents have their own problems and van Sant keeps them firmly in the background.
The focus of Paranoid Park is on the skateboarders, their world and their language. 'We totally did it,' Alex's one-time girlfriend tells a friend after they had sex.
It is also an affluent life: The kids have swimming pools, Jacuzzis, cars - essentially anything they want.
Alex copes with the pressures of teenager life - sex and girlfriends - by adopting the cool demeanour of skateboard culture. He is cool even throughout the questioning from the police.
Instead Alex reveals his internal thoughts by keeping a journal. It could also provide the evidence of what is happened to the security guard.
Apart from taking an interest in modern youth culture, van Sant has been increasingly using a number of non-professional actors in his films.
Indeed, Paranoid Park's casting agents attempted to track down actors for the film by via the internet MySpace site and flyers in record shops.
'I really like working with non-professionals because I try to bring out things that are natural,' said van Sant. There is always the 'unexpected' with non-professionals, he said.
Van Sant also splices into his film amateur super-eight and video footage of skateboarding, which he said was the traditional way of filming the skateboarders.
Besides helping to create the almost trance-like world that skateboarders find themselves in, Paranoid Park's cinematographer Chris Doyle said the movie had hoped to portray 'the incredible energy and movement' of skateboarding.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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