Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life

With the punk phenomenon so often romanticized in popular culture, it can be easy to skew or forget the realities of the time. Not for Lust, though, who chronicles even the most unsavory details of a road trip she and unstable companion Enid took along the fringes of European society in 1984. Originally released almost a decade ago in German to international acclaim, this sprawling bildungsroman follows the duo on their haphazard trek from the streets of Vienna to the Italian sea. Along the way they panhandle, hitch rides, and crash with total strangers, many of whom expect their hospitality to be reciprocated with sexual favors. Rendered with lithe and spontaneous forms washed in appropriately sickly green, Lust surveys issues of personal identity and sexuality through her various encounters with the local demimonde, as well as her frustration with a faceless and indifferent public. Her recollections willfully expose the dark side of an anarchic lifestyle, yet are void of any didactic embellishment, and instead form a genuine and nonjudgmental look at aimless youth and rebellion. And what’s truer to punk than that? (June)