Before I Fall

BEFORE I FALL (Ry Russo-Young, 2017)

High school senior Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch) wakes up on February 12 expecting it to be an eventful day. It is, just not in any way she could have imagined. In BEFORE I FALL Samantha and her friends are on the way home from a party when they are in a terrible car accident. Dying in the crash jolts her awake only to discover that it is February 12 again. At first Samantha thinks she just had a bad dream, but as the day progresses, she finds that everything is repeating. The more Samantha learns what happens on this fateful day, the more determined she is to change the events. Nevertheless, altering her actions seems to have no effect on the loop she is inhabiting.

While much is at stake in BEFORE I FALL, this teen drama variation on GROUNDHOG DAY lacks the richness of the obvious influence for the young adult novel on which the film is based. Related to that, part of the problem exists in not having a clear sense of Samantha’s character before metaphysical complications enter her life. She runs with the popular crowd at school yet doesn’t seem as deserving of such a drastic lesson, unlike Bill Murray’s arrogant weatherman. The arc she travels from insensitivity to enlightenment covers just a small amount of ground. Occupying this purgatory is an unduly harsh penalty for what amounts to a mystical experience in encouraging greater empathy.

The relative mildness of Samantha’s shortcomings can make a significant portion of BEFORE I FALL dramatically unsatisfying. Is such an unhappy circumstance foisted upon her really merited for a teenager who can be a little sharp with her younger sister and mother and less than charitable toward some classmates? Although this aspect can work against the film, it leads to a philosophically nuanced observation by the end. It’s bold for BEFORE I FALL to posit that the small deficiencies in kindness can have ruinous results. Samantha may just make a tiny impression on the world, but the butterfly effect’s amplification of such words and actions means that she’s helping to spread negativity, even if it is invisible. The film isn’t couched in religious terms, yet it reveals itself to be an exercise in following the Golden Rule.

Deutch is an open performer who projects fundamental decency to the point that it can be hard to believe that she’s as bratty and self-involved as the film needs her to be. It’s less a fault of the actress than it is of the screenwriter and director. Samantha’s sensitive and searching qualities are never in doubt when Deutch is called upon to confront the challenge before her. BEFORE I FALL succeeds based on watching how her character responds to the test.

Grade: B-

The Edge of Seventeen

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2016)

Smart and strong-willed seventeen-year-old Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) has always felt like an outsider at home and among her classmates. Her brother Darian (Blake Jenner) is popular and can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of their parents. She never seems to see eye to eye with her mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick). Her father was one of the rare people who understand Nadine, so when he dies unexpectedly, she feels she’s lost her foundation. Now a high school junior in the comedy-drama THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, her longtime best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) is virtually the only person who helps Nadine feel less alone.

This key relationship dissolves when Nadine discovers Krista being intimate with Darian. She considers it a betrayal of the highest order and thinks that demanding that Krista have nothing to do with her brother will right the wrong. To her surprise, Krista refuses to stop being involved with him, leading Nadine to cut off communication with the person she’s closest to. Now feeling more isolated than ever, Nadine reaches out to Erwin (Hayden Szeto), who has awkwardly shown interest in her. She also turns to her history teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), whose lunches she interrupts with her anxious chatter and a dramatic announcement that she’s going to kill herself.

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig recognizes that people in general, and teenagers in particular, can get so obsessed with the stuff swirling inside their own heads that they fail to understand what others are dealing with and invite more of the problems on which they fixate. Nadine would likely deny that she’s a narcissist because she isn’t vain, but her self-absorption runs deep. She nurtures her aggrieved feelings and think they make her special, possibly even superior. Nadine clings to a limited and melodramatic worldview that is inward-looking to the point that she blinds herself to the misery she’s generating in her life and those around her. It’s apparent that she’s always been uncomfortable with herself and takes that out on others too.

Nadine is a complicated character, both self-hating and sharply funny, sometimes cruelly so. Steinfeld does a remarkable job of molding the self-involved teen into someone who can be exasperating without snuffing what’s inherently likable about her. She makes her into someone that can be empathized with yet never pitied. When she does something that embarrasses her or who she’s with, her actions evoke laughing and cringing. Nadine has a tendency to be her own worst enemy. Steinfeld doesn’t try to ingratiate herself for the audience’s benefit but inhabits Nadine’s naked neediness and confusion as the natural state of teenage existence.

To that end, Nadine’s interactions with Mr. Bruner go a long way in humanizing her and gaining perspective. To someone overhearing parts of their conversations in the hallway, the teacher’s sarcastic give-and-take with his emotional student might sound grossly insensitive. It’s funny and at least a little alarming when THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN opens with him brushing off her intention to commit suicide, but the more we come to know about how they talk to one another, the more his dry humor in serious conversations is how he’s able to signal that he cares without getting touchy-feely, which neither of them seem oriented toward being. THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN doesn’t dismiss what Nadine is going through as a phase, but through Mr. Bruner it is capable of taking the long view to relate to her anxiety and know that in time she can get past it.

Grade: B+

The Myth of the American Sleepover

THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER (David Robert Mitchell, 2010)

For teenagers in a Michigan suburb the end of summer is a time for regretting the fun not enjoyed and worrying about what is to come with a new school year. In THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER overnight parties around town provide the opportunity to relish the season’s last idle day. Incoming high school freshmen Maggie (Claire Sloma) and Beth (Annette DeNoyer) ditch a sleepover in search of slightly older guys at a party being thrown by Steven (Douglas Diedrich), a junior they’ve admired while he works at the pool.

Rob (Marlon Morton) will also be starting high school soon. Rather than hanging out with the guys watching movies and egging houses, he wants to comb the neighborhoods for a blonde girl he was checking out at the grocery store. Sophomore Claudia (Amanda Bauer) is relatively new to the area and hopes to make friends at a sleepover that junior Janelle (Shayla Curran) is holding. College senior Scott (Brett Jacobsen) is moping about an ended relationship and decides to track down twin sisters Ady and Anna Abbey (Nikita Ramsey and Jade Ramsey) because one of them might have had a crush on him years ago.

Writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER and his subsequent film IT FOLLOWS share an observational style regarding adolescent American vulnerabilities, thematic similarities, and locations. Although THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER sticks to slice of teenage life than the sliced and stalked teens in IT FOLLOWS, both explore the quiet terror felt during this transformative time. Characters in both films express a longing for the innocence that they have lost or recognize will be diminishing as they grow toward adulthood. Because MYTH adopts DAZED AND CONFUSED-like drop-ins with the town’s youths rather than taking on horror movie form, a wistful quality permeates the tone.

Mitchell excels at capturing fear and confusion about the future, especially when it’s bound up with hormones and urges in overdrive. The characters in MYTH are all sorting through social pressures and biological changes that make this such an emotionally perilous period. Humor from situational recognition of pokes out occasionally, although any cringing on the viewer’s part comes more from dramatic matters than comedic ones. Identifying with these teens comes more easily as Mitchell strives for a timeless feel by eliminating technological signifiers that would place it in any particular year or decade.

For all of the anxiety associated with passing through adolescence, anticipation and infatuations can make it exciting. Why else are these years more mythologized in art than others? THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER conveys a keen understanding of how kids at this time are trying out appearances and personalities and gradually ease into finding themselves. None of the kids or young adults have a firm conception of what they want or would like to be, and clearly nothing is going to be settled after the one night depicted. Mitchell studies the attrition through courage and cowardice that leads to self-definition. The cumulative effect of his film results in compassion for the beauty and volatility of youth.

Grade: B-