Sink or Swim

Director: Su Friedrich
Year Released: 1990
Rating: 1.0

Or, Daddy, How Could You? This is another one of those Daughter's Revenge movies wherein professor/filmmaker Friedrich goes after her own neglectful Pop in a series of lame vignettes in which a little girl tells a series of (fictionalized?) stories over frequently monotonous black and white home movies, commercials, stock footage and freshly-shot film clips. Seems whiny and passive-aggressive and lacks the kind of haywire energy of someone like Sadie Benning, whose video diaries always struck me as being creative and consistently fresh (albeit solipsistic). Sometimes being literally thrown into the water and being told to 'sink or swim' is a cruel teacher ... but sometimes it is the most effective teacher (nobody said life was fair).