Across the pond, it's an East Side Story. The year is 1958 and youth culture is all upheaval, dragging high culture down. Colin (Eddie O'Connell) is an aspiring photographer, capturing the growing groove underground in a neon-lit London; Colin's crepe, Suzette (Patsy Kensit), gains sudden notoriety when she literally rips haute couture, anticipating punk attire. Masterminded by Julien Temple, acclaimed director of first-wave rock videos, Absolute Beginners infuses cinematic space with music both atmospheric and annotative. Between corrupt developers, race riots, and media moguls, the elaborate story is built around stirring set pieces that feature the likes of David Bowie tap-dancing to the screamingly cynical “That's Motivation,” Ray Davies (of the Kinks) calmly crooning “Quiet Life,” and a sizzling Sade melting the medium with “Killer Blow.” Temple's audacious invention is a melding of sixties mod mania and eighties punk aggression, propelled forward with genre-gutting gusto. At Beginners' beginning, Colin guides us through his delirious demimonde, from that first moment admitting, “The Yanks invented teenagers.”