"Sweetness" Review: A Coming of Age Stan Fil
If Misery had a kid for this teen generation it would likely be Sweetness. While we’ve seen films like this before (The Fan, The Fanatic, One Hour Photo), this iteration of obsessive fan takes a different approach. It’s the slow unraveling and journey into darkness of its main character that makes Sweetness a haunting iteration.
Rylee (Kate Hallet) is an outcast at her high school. She tries to keep to herself, but most kids make fun of her regardless. Her only friend is Sidney (Aya Furukawa) and the music of the band Floor Plan. The band’s lead singer, Payton (Herman Tømmeraas) is plastered all over her wall. Her Homelife isn’t much of a reprieve with her dad (Justin Chatwin) on the beat as a police officer and her step mom (Amanda Brugel) trying a bit too hard. So when the opportunity to see her favorite band comes along, she goes!
The band plays in front of a large crowd, but it’s not so big that Payton can’t accidentally hit his number one fan with a car in the parking lot after the concert. Payton offers Rylee a ride home. For Payton, it’s a way to not bring attention to his blunder; for Rylee, it’s a divine moment that was meant to be. As events occur, Rylee realizes that she is supposed to save Payton from a drug relapse and she takes matters in to her own hands to ensure that he stays sober.
So much of what makes this film an interesting watch comes down to the mise en scène, based off the cinematography and direction. The opening montage of teens and tweens at a concert is shot with precision. The red concert lights make it look like they’re trapped in hell as they reach out and scream. Shot any other way it would look like girls freaking out at a concert and screaming for their favorite artist, but writer/director Emma Higgins manages to find the horror in the euphoria. Throughout the film, cinematographer Mat Barkley, uses light and the lack thereof to show the journey of Riley as she goes further down a hole of delusion. A frame can tell a thousand stories and the control of the camera is remarkable.
In a film about an obsessed fan, disassociation is prevalent here. Rylee doesn’t realize that her decisions and actions are dangerous because she’s blinded by a mixture of love, teen emotions, and trauma that she hasn’t properly unpacked. Kate Hallett encompasses the closed off loner teen who only comes to life with her friends or music. It’s a subtle, physical performance in which her body, in combination with Emma Lees’ set costumes, allows her to glide between insecure teen to oblivious, lovelorn, and unbalanced Stan. Similarly, Higgins camera focuses on a subject and glides into a wide or vice versa for moments of detachment.
Ultimately, Sweetness plays like a well outlined script, but the moments between each major plot point has a lack of urgency and sometimes believability that makes you feel like putting your earbuds in for parts of the ride. There are some beautifully shot revelations near the end of the film that just don’t hold the intended gravity of the scene as they should have. Transitioning from music videos and shorts, the influences and eye for visual storytelling is quite apparent in Emma Higgins work. Her song choices in the film are spot on as she matches them to key moments in the film. She’s a filmmaker to watch for sure! Sweetness might not become a classic like Misery, but this coming of age tale of a teen who steps into her darkness could have legs for something more down the road.
Rating: C+
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" Review
Oh to be young again! To have the world at your fingertips and not know what to do with it. For most of us, reminiscing about our teenage selves brings back a multitude of memories — your first dance, first kiss, the fight you had with your parents about getting in five minutes after curfew. As adults, we explore these memories through rose-colored glasses, glossing over how things truly felt way back when. Writer/director Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl removes these glasses and plops viewers right back into the tumultuous life of being a teenager.
The film is told from the perspective of Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley), a 15 year old aspiring cartoonist who lives in San Francisco, during the 1970s. Minnie exists in the world of most teenage girls: her bedroom walls are covered in art and posters of Iggy Pop and Janis Joplin, she holds telephone conversations with her best friend in the bathroom while her little sister listens on the other side of the door, she passes notes to boys in class, and most importantly, she records life’s daily confusions in an audio cassette diary. Where Minnie’s story diverges from that of a typical teenage girl is found in the film’s R-rating: Minnie likes having sex.
Exploring sexuality is nothing new for coming-of-age films. The Diary of a Teenage Girl exists in the minority though for its honest, full-throttle approach to teenagers and sex. For Minnie, and her sexuality, sex is not the awkward “I don’t know what I’m doing here” scenario often depicted in films on the same subject. Minnie is bewildered, but very much empowered by the sex she is and is not having. It’s a rare approach, one that might leave audiences cringing more than usual, but it is an honest one. The film takes ample time to explore the internal world of Minnie and with that comes the familiar teenage, wildly inconsistent thoughts on love and body image — grounding Minnie’s exploration of sex in the naïveté of a 15 year old girl.
While the movie’s honest approach to teenagers and sexuality deserves a fair amount of praise, the argument could be made that it tries a little too hard in this arena. Maybe the film’s first person perspective is to blame, but the film lacks a well-roundedness that could’ve easily been achieved by amping up the performances of the other characters in Minnie’s world, especially since the film features a well stacked cast. Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgard, and Christopher Meloni all play supporting characters, and there was definitely a missed opportunity to give the film a little more depth through their performances.
Nostalgia is the name of the game for The Diary of a Teenage Girl and on that front, the film delivers. The good, the bad and the ugly are all out in the open as Heller uses Minnie to help us all remember the innocence, and the confusion, of our youth.
Rating: B-