Matisse van Rossum’s review published on Letterboxd:
I have yet to see a Harmony Korine film that I haven't loved, and his directorial debut was no exception. What I always love about Harmony Korine films is how they manage to be simultaneously visceral and bizarre while still managing to be beautiful in a very raw kind of way. Gummo has a very loose narrative and isn't so much a story as it is an exploration of themes such as mental illness, drug abuse, sexual abuse, cruelty, and boredom. This film shows all the aspects of American life that aren't glorified by the media, and while there are certainly parts that are unsettling and disturbing, it's almost impossible to look away. This is a quality that all the Harmony Korine films I've seen have, and Korine is adept at painting this kind of picture like no other director I've ever seen.
Another thing that makes this such a raw, visceral film is Korine's use of non-actors. The performances have a gritty sense of authenticity to them, and it's sometimes difficult to distinguish what is acting and what is just an aspect of that character's real life personality, which, depending on what the characters are doing, can make them even more disturbing. The use of non-actors is an aspect that was somewhat of a trademark of the Italian Neorealist Movement, and while you could draw parallels between Gummo and some Italian Neorealist films, Korine's style is so unique and so assuredly HIS that it kind of feels wrong trying to categorize it into an established style or genre. I love the way this film looks. It's shot mostly handheld, which gives it a kind of documentary or found footage feel to it, even though it's not. Korine's choice of what to shoot it on is brilliant, switching between 35mm, 8mm, VHS, polaroid, and so on, giving each scene its own feel and color. When this is coupled with the simple stories of the various characters, interwoven with vignettes of the town of Xenia, Ohio, it creates a surreal, engaging, and mildly disgusting picture of a poverty stricken small town America.
I always find it hard to fully appreciate a Harmony Korine film after one viewing, because there's always so much hidden meaning under the guise of simplicity. I feel the same way about Gummo. There was so much that I liked about it that it's hard to appreciate it all because it's kind of hard to process it all. This is definitely one for a rewatch.