Trash

A companion piece to Flesh, with Dallesandro as a down-and-out junkie living on New York's Lower East Side whose heroin addiction has rendered him impotent; just as Joe's desirable virility formed the (nominal) subject of Flesh, so his undesirable impotence is at the centre of Trash. The surprise value of Morrissey's films (the 'liberating nudity', the frankness about sexuality, the playful reversals of sex-roles) camouflaged a number of crucial failings. Flesh and Trash are both eulogies to Dallesandro's body, but are also both moralistic to the point of being puritan about sex in general, and the female sex in particular.