Coming of Age Film – Bitch Flicks

Andrea Arnold’s ‘American Honey’: A Young Woman Reclaims Her Life’s Trajectory

Andrea Arnold’s films largely focus on the female experience, predominantly that of young women transitioning into adulthood. … It is here then, that Arnold’s depiction of female desire and agency warrants praise. Star acts on her own wants and needs, and seeing Jake, acknowledges her longing. She consciously rejects the current trajectory of her life, and intentionally and purposefully seeks a new one.

This guest post written by Siobhan Denton appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Andrea Arnold’s films largely focus on the female experience, predominantly that of young women transitioning into adulthood. These women often find this experience problematic, particularly when informed or defined through their relationship with the men around them. Fish Tank’s Mia establishes a formative, abusive relationship with the much older Conor, while Cathy Earnshaw, finding herself perpetually torn between both men and social status, is driven to physical illness in Wuthering Heights. While Mia is able to leave behind her experience with Conor, and her unsupportive family, she still finds her freedom through establishing a relationship with a man. While this male character is on equal terms with Mia, and their relationship thus appears to be far healthier, she still needs him in order to remove herself from her current environment.

American Honey’s Star (Sasha Lane) is, initially, similarly propelled into action through interaction with a male character. Jake (Shia LaBeouf), part of the magazine crew selling subscriptions managed by Krystal (Riley Keough), imparts a vision of a life filled with no responsibility. For Star, whose life currently consists of digging through dumpsters to find food with two young charges, Jake’s offer is difficult to turn down. Initially, she resists, feeling some level of responsibility towards her current life, despite its futility. Quickly though, she recognizes that these children, and indeed the domesticity that she is attempting to uphold despite the harassment she receives from the children’s father, is not her concern.

It is here then, that Arnold’s depiction of female desire and agency warrants praise. Star acts on her own wants and needs, and seeing Jake, acknowledges her longing. She consciously rejects the current trajectory of her life, and intentionally and purposefully seeks a new one.

Her meeting with Jake signals the life that Star seeks. First, she witnesses him travelling on the bus filled with the various adolescent members of the magazine crew. The pair lock eyes. Jake is surrounded by his fellow crew members, while Star holds the spoils of her latest dumpster search, young children beside her. Seeing the bus turn into a supermarket, Star implores the children to join her in visiting the store. Once inside, she watches Jake dance to Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” clambering up on the checkout counter to ensure that he’s caught Star’s attention. It is this version of Jake that Star finds entrancing; she seems to revel in his vicariousness and enjoys his physicality.

Take the scene in the parking lot, in which the pair almost face off as if battling one another. The camera constantly moves, weaving and bobbing around between the two as they edge towards and away from one another, not quite ready to trust each other’s intentions yet intrigued by what one another appear to represent. For Star, Jake represents a life lived without constraints, a life in which she has power and control over her own life. For Jake, Star seemingly represents an opportunity to indulge in his own desires.

Later, after spending more time with Jake, Star discovers that in fact, despite the image that he presents, he subscribes to the American Dream in the same way that everyone else does. He becomes disappointingly conventional, and in turn, loses his hold over her. Star has witnessed and lived the drudgery of domesticity and seeks an escape from it.

Jake tries to mold Star to his desires. He wants to have her, and to be with Krystal simultaneously without consequences. In training Star, he attempts to impart his money-making ways upon her, encouraging her to lie. She watches as he profusely insists to a potential customer of his desire to attend college and the subsequent need to sell subscriptions in order to do so. Jake expects Star to act in the same way, using any anecdote regardless of its validity in order to secure a sale. Notably, in training Star, he expects, and Krystal insists (when it is noted that Star is not yet making enough money) to secure sales through lies and blurred facts. This is the way in which Jake has found success, and to him, it is the only way. In teaching Star, Jake assumes the role of experienced, intellectual educator. He instructs Star in the ways in which he has previously found success, never offering Star the opportunity to prove her own worth in her own manner.

When Star, in an attempt to prove her worth, engages with a group of older men and agrees to travel back to their home, Jake immediately questions her actions. To Jake, Star’s actions demonstrate a need to be rescued. He arrives uninvited to the wealthy abode, aggressively insisting that Star join him in leaving. Star, left to her devices, has managed to secure an impressive sale and shows that away from Jake, she is more than capable of interacting with men and maintaining her own power dynamic. Jake struggles to accept this and chastises Star for her methods. It is after this pseudo-rescue that Jake and Star first consummate their burgeoning relationship. It is as if Jake feels the need to reassert his control and power over Star, unable to recognize that she is able to enact her own wants and needs and that she’s able to survive on her own terms.

Jake constantly insists on rescuing Star, particularly from situations that are of her own intentional making. Star agrees to offer her services to an oil worker for a substantial amount of money. There is no real sense that Star feels manipulated or coerced into agreeing to this transaction, but Jake, upon discovering the situation, once again acts aggressively. First, he asserts his masculine power by attacking the oil worker, then by questioning Star’s behavior and displaying his displeasure at her actions. We later discover that Jake regularly sleeps with the girls that he helps to recruit to the magazine crew, but he appears to insist on Star’s fidelity while not displaying any such intention himself.

It is in this moment that Star recognizes that Jake’s conventional nature is prohibiting the life that she has sought for herself. The imbalance of power that has existed cannot be corrected, while Jake still insists on performative gender stereotypes. At the narrative’s close, Jake gifts Star with a turtle. Star, retreating from the group, sets the turtle free, symbolically coinciding with her decision to allow herself to follow her own desires, rather than monitor them to cater to Jake’s needs.

Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at The Blue and the Dim.

‘The Fits’: A Coming-of-Age Story About Belonging and Identity

It’s when the older girls on the dance team begin to have “fits” or what’s referred to as hysteria, that Toni begins to question just how much she wants to fit in. It’s fear mixed with curiosity that drives her. It’s an exploration of a part of the human psyche, told less with words and more with images, a coming-of-age story about friendship, belonging and identity, but with an eerie, occasionally unnerving tone.

This is a guest post written by Melanie Taylor.

The Fits is a trip into the internal world of an eleven year old girl named Toni who is curiously but tentatively tip-toeing into the mysterious and unfamiliar realm of adolescence. Toni, played by Royalty Hightower, trains in boxing with her brother at the local rec center, but when she spies on a dance team of teenage girls called the Lionesses, who practice next door, she steps out of the familiar confines of boxing to join them. This leads her on a mysterious path to question what’s happening around her.

Based on the trailer, the film — directed by Anna Rose Holmer, and co-written by Holmer in collaboration with co-writers Saela Davis and Lisa Kjerulff — appears to be about a young girl trying to make it on a dance team, but it’s a much more internal exploration of self-discovery without vocalizing those changes. As a matter of fact, the main character barely speaks throughout the entire film and when she does, other than soft counting or a quiet “yeah” here and there, she doesn’t say much until around the midpoint of the film. Even with the sparse dialog, everything that Toni thinks and feels is conveyed through the use of sounds, images, and long takes.

Despite being first-time actresses, the cast gave honest and compelling performances. Lead actress Royalty Hightower brought a strikingly mature quality to the film, given her young age. Breezy, played by Alexis Neblett, her new friend who she meets on the dance team, was equally as compelling, bringing a charming playful levity to the scenes and to Toni’s intense internal world. Director Holmer says she cast a real dance team to bring to the film a sense of “authentic sisterhood that young women experience when they bond on a team.”

The older girls on the dance team were seen from the perspective of Toni, catching glimpses of conversations by eavesdropping, peering through cracked doors and around corners, piecing together her own narrative about them. But it’s when the teenage girls begin experiencing unexplainable “fits” that she begins to question her place in this new group and the more she senses the inevitable changes of growing up, scary as it may be. The sound design made use of environmental factors to create tension and release over and over. Sounds frequently shifted from loud jarring eruptions of shouting girls bursting through hallway doors, to sudden silence and the quiet rustling of a shirt. These effects gave the film a Kubrick-esque quality of eeriness and a sense that something isn’t quite right. The jarring noises or slow wiry discordant notes gave the score a spooky horror film vibe at times, but without violence or gore and a more positive mood. But really, the sounds are meant to reflect the internal conflict of growing up and transitioning into a new phase of life.

These changes can be scary and having a group of like-minded peers around can help ease that process, like the Lionesses dance team that Toni joins. Holmer says the film was inspired by watching videos on YouTube of girls who recorded other girls having “fits,” like hysteria, but that went unexplained. The film is not about what happens with the dance team; it’s about the desire to belong without losing your own sense of self. The Fits is about being fit, having “fits,” and wanting to fit in without compromising one’s sense of self and individuality.

Melanie Taylor graduated from CSUN with a degree in screenwriting. She writes for her blog The Feminist Guide to Hollywood and is also a musician who shares her music on soundcloud.com/phantomcreatures. Follow her on Twitter @mellowknee.

Eve and the Second Sight

The story of Eve also elevates the image of Black women as the foundation of families. This element becomes most important as the film progresses.

This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.

Eve’s Bayou (1997) begins with the haunting lines: “The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old, my brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely had just turned 14.” With this preamble is the expectation of the tragic to occur. While the core of a majority of Black family dramas involves tragedy in the form of slavery, poverty, or mental/physical abuse, Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut reinvents the way audiences view Black families. On a rare occasion, the story of a Black family is allowed to be told through the eyes of a Black female protagonist. Eve’s Bayou is in part a “coming of age” drama.

The history of the Batiste family of Louisiana lies in their ancestry. Eve, an African slave, saved a French aristocrat, Jean-Paul Batiste, from cholera. In return, Batiste granted her freedom and named the island in Louisiana, after her. In turn, Eve bore Batiste 16 children. Ten-year-old Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett), the story’s protagonist, is named after her and is a descendant of Eve and Jean-Paul Batiste. The fact that their ancestry is an integral part of their lives reveals several things: the first being that they clearly know who they are in terms of culture. Through the sordid decades of slavery, Blacks in America have little to no knowledge of their genealogy. It is a part of our past that is not clearly defined. However, in Eve’s Bayou, their background is not only acknowledged but embraced. They can often be heard speaking French phrases throughout the film. The story of Eve also elevates the image of Black women as the foundation of families. This element becomes most important as the film progresses.

The first time audiences meet the Batiste family, we are immediately thrust into a world that is uncharted and unfamiliar for most Black families in motion pictures, as well as the audiences. The hot sound of jazz fills the Victorian mansion, women are dressed in fine satins, and laughter fills the air. The young Eve appears and immediately incites mischief upon her brother Poe (Jake Smollett), while her sister, Cisely (Meagan Good), reprimands them, likening them to William Shakespeare’s Tybalt and Mercutio. Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) is their father and a successful, beloved doctor in the community. Their mother, Roz (Lynn Whitfield) is a homemaker, whose beauty is referenced throughout the film. There appears to be a strong family dynamic and they are living the quintessential American dream. Here, the Black family to audiences is “normalized” to a general American landscape. This factor becomes a metaphor for the supernatural aspects—the gift of second sight—of the film. Lemmons forces her audience to see beyond what is generally depicted about a Black family in the 1950s.

While the traditional family dynamic is important in the film, the coming of age aspect is even more so instrumental to the plot. When audiences first meet Eve, we see through her eyes how she feels marginalized within the family dynamic. She suffers from the classic “middle child” syndrome. Poe, her younger brother, is the quintessential “mama’s boy” to Roz, while Cisely is the clandestine “daddy’s girl” to Louis. Eve finds kinship in her aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan). Both share two qualities: their beautiful red hair and the gift of second sight. Not only do Eve and Mozelle see the future, but they are hyper-aware of their surroundings. This becomes especially significant when Eve becomes cognizant of her father’s infidelity. This realization not only disrupts the harmonious father-daughter relationship, but ultimately changes their family dynamic.

Louis’ penchant for adultery is not something that is usually portrayed in stories about Black families. Largely, Black fathers are either portrayed as: physically/emotionally absent or highly upstanding. In comedies, fathers are most likely the source of comic relief, while his wife is the “straight man” and the situational aspects generally focus on him or he is involved in some manner in the resolution. A current example of this is ABC’s Black-ish, while earlier incarnations are The Cosby Show, and The Jeffersons. I think that in Lemmons’ film, as well as Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, fathers are portrayed as loving, yet flawed. Louis is undoubtedly a serial adulterer, but that does not change his affection toward his children.

When Eve discovers Louis’ infidelity she and Cisely begin to either cling to or detach themselves from him. Eve accompanies him on his house calls—once he closes the door in Eve’s face to give a patient what can be presumed “sexual healing.” This later prompts Eve to question, “Do you ever want other children besides us?” Louis assures her by telling her that he loves her mother, but the seed of distrust was planted the night of the party when she witnessed his infidelity in the shed with family friend, Mrs. Matty Mereaux. Cisely begins to cling to her father. She waits up for him at night when he arrives home late from house calls and pours him a drink to assuage his stress. Cisely also contends with Roz, who scolds Louis about his late nights. Cisely sees her mother as the antagonist who is driving her father out of their lives. This anxiety arguably prompts the “kiss of death” that transpires between Louis and Cisely.

The kiss that occurs between Cisely and her father is what Eve thinks led to his subsequent death. Cisely confides to Eve that one night, she went to comfort her father and a sexual kiss was exchanged. At her resistance he slaps her to the grown and a look of rage filled his eyes. This admission prompts Eve to procure the local witch, Elzora (Diahann Carroll), to cast a spell of death. However, the night that Louis is killed, something within Eve prompts her to attempt to save her father. In going to the town bar to bring him home, it is likely that Eve has reservations about how he hurt Cisely. But it is hard to not believe her sister when Eve has witnessed her father’s distrust on a number of occasions. Yet, it is too late, Mr. Mereaux in a crime of passion, shoots Louis dead, with Eve as witness. This moment leaves Eve forever changed, even more so when she discovers that Louis did not molest Cisely. Rather Cisely’s prominent memory is that Louis hurt her. Symbolically this means that everything Cisely disbelieved about her father to be true.

It is significant that in the beginning of the film, adult Eve states: “The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old, my brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely had just turned 14.” Whereas at the end she says: “The summer my father said goodnight I was 10 years old, my brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely had just turned 14. ” This changing in lines demonstrates that Eve accepts that her father’s death was not of her provocation, but his own.

The death of Louis allows for several new things to occur. It brings Roz closer to her children, it allows Eve to understand that not everything is “black and white,” and most significantly, women continue to be the foundation of their family. Though Poe is the sole male in their household, perhaps upbringing from Roz, Cisely, Eve, and Mozelle will influence him on how to respect women. However, Cisely and Eve are missing years in their adolescence in which fatherly love and influence is key. Yet there is not the sense that the sisters will stray. The indicator of this lies in the final shot as Eve destroys Louis’ letter in which he reveals the miscommunication between him and Cisely. Ten-year-old Eve assumes the role of her ancestor Eve by nurturing her sister. As they stand together, hand in hand, looking out across the bayou, they intend to deal with this situation and future hardships together. Eve’s Bayou ultimately becomes about how women and sisters look beyond tragedy to find strength in one another.

Rachel Wortherley is a graduate of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York and holds a Master of Arts degree in English. Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, television shows, and films. She hopes to gain a doctorate in English literature and become a professional screenwriter.

The Beautiful Journey of ‘Layover’: An Interview and Review

Written by Rachel Redfern.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yU_m-uxwe8″]

While so many of us find displeasure in the level of Hollywood films often topping the box office, the new indie film, Layover, directed by Joshua Caldwell is proof that it is not the budget and special effects that make a memorable film, rather it’s the story and characters that we find compelling. Layover is a beautiful, atmospheric indie film about a young French woman, with limited English, who has a 12-hour, one night layover in Los Angeles. Simone (Nathalie Fay) looks up an old friend and from there, spends a reflective, surprising evening on the streets of LA.

Joshua Caldwell, the award-winning director and screenwriter of Layover, was generous enough to grant us an interview for this piece and help us understand how Layover came together and what makes it so compelling. Simone is a woman in transit, and as Caldwell explained to us, a woman “who was on a journey, but a journey she wasn’t really sure she wanted to be on. She’s given this brief moment of pause and reflection before having to decide whether she continues on or not.”

The viewer’s experience of Simone’s thoughtful, life-changing night in Los Angeles is further augmented by the fact that 90 percent of the dialogue is in French. While making life much more difficult for the editing team, and obviously for the actors and crew, it also increases the feeling of isolation that we experience through Simone, making the city seem truly unfamiliar. And while adding to the general atmosphere of the film and the power of Simone’s layover, according to Caldwell, it actually increased the actor’s performance: “Shooting in French actually allowed me to focus more on the performance and emotion and make sure that was coming through regardless of the language. My ear wasn’t tuned to whether the words were correct or not, which can often distract you from paying attention to the emotions.”

'Layover' and its atmospheric Los Angeles — *Layover* and its atmospheric Los Angeles

It’s a plan that apparently worked and as a female viewer, I loved Simone’s bold, no-fear attitude. This wasn’t a movie about being out alone late at night wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city, but rather about moving confidently through space, regardless of our inner fears about growing up. Simone’s concerns about becoming a mother and the perils of marriage, but her wish to still move forward despite her own fears, certainly speak to the experience of the modern 20- (or 30-) something.

And yet, the way that Simone slides through a single night in a foreign country (whether metaphorical or literal) is not only reflective of the millennial experience, but also of a larger, more human experience. The surprising connections, the flirtations, the dancing, the night views, the sense of isolation, the unwelcoming airport terminals and blank hotel rooms. But also, the sense of community between a small group as people wander in and out of a party, the awkward conversations with old friends, and the inevitable regrets of old choices and vague hopes of new ones, are all present.

It’s a tribute to Caldwell that the moody, quiet woman we meet at the beginning, is by the end of the film, not necessarily different, but appears to the audience to be completely different—real, relatable, transitioning.

The film has been heralded as a beautiful coming of age film, which it is; however, it’s the intimate connection that Simone and the “Mysterious Motorcyclist” (Karl Landler) make that sets this film apart. Intimacy without romance and erotic tension without sex is difficult to portray, but Layover manages to connect two young, average people in one, surprising, unexpected moment. Its sort of the most beautiful, and best kind of movie, the kind of story that film does best, two souls connecting, understanding, changing, and then saying goodbye, either to each other, or who they were before. And it’s these kinds of stories that connect across age, which was exactly Caldwell’s intention, despite the film’s stars all being obvious millennials.

Layover is an anomaly in other ways as well; the acting is superb, the dialogue realistic, and several of the scenes were compounded by haunting cinematography, yet the whole package production cost a mere $6,000. Contrast that number, a solid down payment on a Toyota, to the $30 million spent on Guardians of the Galaxy.

Telling great stories like Layover with such a small amount though will hopefully have repercussions in the rest of Hollywood as some film budgets, and the films being made, are hopefully reconsidered. According to Caldwell, having a smaller budget actually helped Layover to move organically, allowing the characters to interact with more realistic situations; “There’s a reality to it that I don’t think would have come from a more polished piece. Also, what our lack of money forced us to do was create really compelling characters that jump off the screen and stick with you after the movie is over.”

It’s a powerful lesson in the abilities of excellent storytelling to arise from a more grounded budget, (an almost laughable meta-moment of art imitating life), and makes sense as Layover takes its influence from the French New Wave style, which favors being creative with what you have. Layover was actually shot on a Canon 5D, which Caldwell believes, “was a beautiful example of what can be done with a minimal budget.”

Karl Ladler as the 'Mysterious Motorcyclist' in 'Layover' — Karl Landler as the “Mysterious Motorcyclist” in *Layover*

And it’s not just to Caldwell’s credit that the film has turned out so well, but also to the excellent quality of actors he’s employed; Nathalie Fay especially is worth watching in the future, though you can catch glimpses of her in past roles for Hangover and Due Date. Caldwell too, heaped praise on the star of Layover and told us how he managed to grab such a talented actor for his project: “I met Nathalie (Fay) when she came in to audition for a very small role in a digital project I was directing called Level 26: Dark Revelations. During shooting, we got to talking and she mentioned she was from Montreal and spoke French, and I guess that just stuck with me. With Layover, I needed people who I knew would be on board with the way we were shooting it (on weekends, no trailer, do their own make up, etc.)… But beyond all that, Nathalie was a natural for the role and deserves all the praise she’s receiving.”

It’s the final scene however, that is especially moving; in a beautiful voiceover, Simone predicts her future and wanders through the sadness and depression she knows she’ll feel soon, but also the hope she has that happiness will be there too. It’s a familiar, very poignant moment, and I found my experiences suddenly, fully, reflected back to me, in that thoughtful way that only good stories can accomplish.

Luckily, Caldwell is working on more projects, including a second film in the LAX trilogy (of which Layover is the first), which includes yet another female protagonist passing through Los Angeles, though this time with higher stakes: “The second film in the series is called Assassin, and it’s the story of a female contract killer named Jane who escapes up to the San Bernardino Mountains when a job goes wrong. There, she meets and falls in love with a local woman named Ella. As the two grow closer, the baggage of their past lives threatens the future of their relationship.”

As with Layover, Assassin will be produced on a minimal budget, though this time, Caldwell and company are looking for some audience participation and will be funding this film through Seed&Spark and would obviously love any support offered (you can check out their Seed&Spark page here and a trailer for the project here.).

Josh Caldwell, director and screenwriter for 'Layover' — Josh Caldwell, director and screenwriter for *Layover*

Joshua Caldwell is an MTV Movie Award winning director, writer, and producer. He has worked with a number of high-profile producers, including CSI: creator Anthony E. Zuiker. His award-winning short film Dig, starring Mark Margolis of Breaking Bad, was featured in numerous film festivals and his Superman fan fiction short film Resignation which screened at Comic-Con 2014. LAYOVER had its World Premiere at the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival where it was nominated for the prestigious FIPRESCI New American Cinema Award and is now available at LayoverFilm.com. Follow Joshua on Twitter @Joshua_Caldwell

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Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

‘Wetlands’: Vile Beauty, with Schnitzel

This visual powerhouse contains many explicit scenes depicting bodily functions and some of the more interesting aspects of human sexuality. But don’t be fooled, ‘Wetlands’ excels at using shocking imagery to break down walls and build our connection to the characters. The result is distinctly warm and expressive take on the female coming-of-age story.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Wetlands (2013) is the “most WTF, NSFW movie,” or at least that’s what its promotional materials can’t wait to tell you. So you might be forgiven for expecting a one-note gross-out film with copious amounts of Euronudity, and you would be (sort of) right. Explicit unsanitary behavior is the film’s party piece, but it’s much more than that. It’s the best kind of gimmick: the kind that works.

Wetlands was written and directed by German auteur David Wnendt (Combat Girls, 2011). It was adapted from the 2008 book of the same name by Charlotte Roche (actually, Feuchtgebiete, if we’re going to keep it real Deutsch). The novel was a well-received bestseller, though some critics have described it (often while clutching their pearls) as erotic fiction or pornography.

The film was originally released at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013, and was shown at Sundance in 2014. It’s currently in limited release in the United States through October. The story follows Helen Memel (Carla Juri), a young woman with an almost pathological obsession with filth, as she hits common Bildungsroman beats, e.g., sex, friendship, rebellion, divorced parents, and family secrets.

The films opens with Helen skateboarding barefoot down a grey street in a generic German city. She stops to apply hemorrhoid cream in what may be the filthiest abandoned subway restroom ever. Helen’s voiceover details her long suffering with the affliction, and we’re also told that her mother always says good hygiene Down There (in the wetlands, get it?) is important because a “pussy is dirtier than a penis.” Helen shows us her own feelings about hygiene by grinding her vulva in a circular motion around the dirty toilet seat.

This opening sequence also establishes three overarching elements:

1. Helen represents the antithesis of the modern western woman and her pedantic attention to personal hygiene fostered by years of exposure to patriarchal cultural norms and manipulative advertising.

2. The restroom is flooded, covered in two inches of chocolate-brown water filled with cigarette butts and other refuse. As she sits on the toilet, we see Helen’s bare feet firmly planted in the water. Her acts and the filthy water seem like part of a perverse baptism, one that rejects the symbolic purification and rebirth associated with traditional Christian baptism. Later, critical moments often involve Helen’s or someone else’s immersion in water in line with the more conventional symbology, culminating with Helen’s inundation in the final scene.

3. This film is pretty. For example, midway through the sequence we get a beautiful, slick opening credits animation that will ensure that you never think about pubic hair and pee stains in the same way. It also sets the precedent for the look of the rest of the film: simultaneously cozy and disorienting, with the commercial refinement of a car advertisement (BMW or Mercedes, of course).

The action quickly shifts to Helen’s hospital room (these scenes may have been filmed in the local IKEA’s nurse’s station). She’s recovering from surgery done to remove an anal fissure gained while she was shaving her anus. By this point, we’ve heard Helen expound favorably on men’s preferred vaginal discharge texture (cottage cheese, in her experience), so her desire to be completely clean shaven seems discordant. Through flashbacks, we learn her motivation for this act. We’re then introduced to her best friend and neighbor, Corinna (Marlen Kruse), who has recently been alienated at her high school due to her willingness to indulge her former boyfriend’s coprophilia. Helen instructs Corinna to dab some of her own vaginal secretions behind her ears to attract the attention of their mutual acquaintance and dealer, Toni (Ludger Bökelmann).

We also meet Helen’s divorced parents, played by Meret Becker and Axel Milberg. Quite unlike Helen, Becker’s character is tidy to a fault. She also suffers from depression and personality disorder, and once cut off 8-year-old Helen’s eyelashes to teach her a lesson about vanity. Milberg’s character is oblivious to the pain he causes his family by his self-centered nature. In another childhood flashback his inattentive and ineffective application of sunscreen to 8-year-old Helen’s back results in a severe sunburn. Another scene shows a young Helen delighted to be allowed to suck on her father’s used avocado pit, saying that it was “almost like they’d kissed.” This exemplifies her desperate desire for acknowledgment by her father. Present-day Helen’s only non-sex-and-drugs hobby is tending several avocado pits suspended in plastics water cups, a group she calls her “family.”

The balance of the story concerns Helen’s use of her hospital stay as the linchpin of a guileless scheme to get her parents to reconcile and remarry. She also courts Robin (Christoph Letkowski), the male nurse assigned to monitor her recovery. By court, I mean she alternates between crying out for relief from her loneliness and attempting to seduce Robin with faux Cool Girl grossness.

Helen’s relationship with her mother doesn’t progress very far, but it is eventually implied that a family secret involving her mother may be the root cause of Helen’s self-destructive behavior. More dynamic is Helen and Corinna’s friendship. We see them share drugs, a bath, and, later, their used tampons. After swapping cotton, Helen runs her bloody fingers over Corinna’s face and deems her “blood sister.” Corinna reciprocates. What this scene lacks in subtlety it makes up for in impact.

While the first two acts imply otherwise, in the final act we learn that Helen is actually much more dependent on Corinna than vice versa. When she discovers that Corinna is pregnant by Toni, Helen, driven by her fear of loneliness, lashes out at her friend and contemplates suicide. Helen has recently been sterilized by choice because she refuses to perpetuate the mental illness that afflicts the women in her maternal lineage.

Helen’s graphic disregard for hygiene as a symbol of her rejection of conventional gender and familial norms does begin to feel a bit gimmicky towards the end of the film, but it is also very effective at relaying the impact of her mother’s illness and her parent’s divorce on her development. Some other symbolic imagery, like the surreal scene of an avocado plant growing from pit to several feet high from Helen’s vagina, is similarly heavy handed.

Other commentary on the plight of women include the male medical staffs’ casual disregard for Helen’s autonomy or ability to assess her own health. Following the surgery, Dr. Notz (Edgar Selge), laughs off Helen’s concerns about malpractice by saying “girls her age are prone to hysteria.” Later, a scene involving four men, a pizza, and some Olympics-level synchronized ejaculation evokes conventional concerns about the dehumanizing effects of pornography and subsequent propagation of rape culture by male viewers.

To his credit, Wnendt is largely successful in avoiding employment of the male gaze. The camera rarely lingers on Helen’s body during scenes with incidental nudity. Sex scenes depict both male and female nudity with either cozy familiarity or clinical coldness. So, while it is certainly explicit, and may be erotic, Wetlands is hardly pornographic.

Don’t be fooled by reviews that focus on the bodily fluids and sex — Wetlands excels at using shocking imagery to break down walls and build our connection to the characters. The result is singular, warm take on the female coming-of-age story for the whole (very modern) family.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

What ‘Now and Then’ Taught Me About Friendship

Summer has always been a magical time where childhood lingers, and every time I get on a swingset again, or have a hankering for a push pop, or throw on my ‘Now and Then’ soundtrack, I think of my childhood and feel invigorated with that rush of youth. I think of Taylor and Sara, and a time when we were so eager to make our own adventures. I also think of those four girls from the Gaslight Addition; somehow they affected my life by making me appreciate what it means to be and have a true friend in this wild world.

This guest post by Kim Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

I was pretty excited about Sara’s 11^thbirthday party. Her mom owned a print shop and I was told we’d be having cake and playing games there; I enjoy the smell of paper so it didn’t seem like an odd place to have a party. After Sara opened presents we were outside at a picnic table lit by a floodlight from the print shop, glittering and bedazzling hats and T-shirts.

Sara’s birthday was in March, and just a few months before, a group of us went to the movies to see a new film called Now and Then. Since then, it was all any of us could talk about. We’d gone back to see it countless times, and one of those times, we were the only ones in the whole theater, a group of four or five of us girls, running around, doing cartwheels and singing and dancing. (I’d be remiss not to mention that I actually still have the original soundtrack, and it’s in my car as we speak.)

What Sara hadn’t told us was that her mom’s print shop was located right next door to a crematorium. It was a small grey building with a giant stone yard, filled with coffins of all sizes. I saw that my finished hat masterpiece was drying next to one that said the same thing as mine, “Teeny,” speckled with orange and yellow flower power decor. A blonde girl walked over with an impressed-looking grin on her face. “Wow, you actually look like Thora Birch,” she said to me. A few other girls formed around us and we all began to gush over our favorite movie of the year. A fancy car drove by at that very moment and we all squealed, pumping each other with a sugar high as if one of the actors from the movie was in our neighborhood, you know—cruising by the print shop and the crematorium on a dark Saturday night.

Now and Then wasn’t just a coming-of-age ‘90s girl movie. It was intersecting itself into my life as an 11-year-old fifth grader; I was same age as the characters in the film. And I felt we were all doing this “growing up” thing together. I cut out any clippings from magazines I could find on the movie, though it wasn’t hard because Devon Sawa, who played wormy Scott Wormer, was a common household name among girls my age. He was a teen heartthrob all over the pages of Tiger Beat and Bop and I instantly obtained both the movie soundtrack and the film score (and amassed a huge pile of pinup photos of Sawa). In 1995, there was a resurgence of the trippy hippie ‘60s style and I was obsessed with rock ‘n roll for the first time. The only thing my bedroom was missing was a lava lamp. You could say I didn’t care all that much about the boys in my class, just what my friends and I would do over the weekend at our upcoming sleepover. I savored this new art of forming real bonds with girlfriends.

Now and Then is a film about four friends: Samantha, Teeny, Roberta, and Chrissy, who are growing up in the Midwest in the ‘70s (though much of the film was shot in Savannah, Georgia). A couple of decades have passed and Chrissy (played by Rita Wilson) is pregnant, living in her parents’ old home, and married to a guy she once thought was a mega dork. Teeny (Melanie Griffith) is a blossoming actress in Hollywood, with, as Roberta puts it, “Long legs, a tiny waist, and large, perky breasts.”

“Roberta you know how I feel about swearing,” Chrissy says back.

“Chrissy, breast is not a dirty word,” Roberta insists.

Which leads me to Roberta (Rosie O’Donnell), who has become a doctor and according to Chrissy, “Lives in sin with her boyfriend.” But more on that in a moment. Last but never least is Samantha (Demi Moore), a writer, and the narrator of this film; she is sarcastic, jaded, and arguably depressed. She explains that she hasn’t been to the Gaslight Addition in years (the neighborhood where all the girls grew up, which looks like any other midcentury American neighborhood). Now the girls reunite at their familiar stomping grounds for the arrival of Chrissy’s baby—and boy is she ready to pop. Waddling around in the house in a bow-tied muumuu dress, Chrissy opens up her home to her old friends, who awkwardly situate on the plastic-covered couch as if nothing’s changed in 25 years. Roberta is helping Chrissy around the house and offers the girls a beer, Samantha slinks into the backyard in all-black threads perfect for a moody writer, and Teeny inches through the yard in her heels, wearing a pearly white skin-tight skirt and matching jacket. As they play catch-up, they stare up at the treehouse they spent so much of their time as kids saving up money for, and slowly that eternal summer of their youth begins to skim back to the surface…

In our own little ways, my friends and I were making our own pacts for the first time—Sara, me, and our friend Taylor, plus the new girls we’d just met at Sara’s birthday. We would ride our bicycles from Taylor’s to Sara’s house, singing and laughing, stopping downtown at an old diner in the hopes we might see Janeane Garofalo in character as Wiladene, diner waitress by day, clairvoyant mystic by night. You could say I was enamored by this new, untapped part of me that the film was bringing out. I had a mix of confidence and fear—to explore, not just on our bicycles, but also in our minds—through séances and tarot cards, music and making up stories. (We commenced our friendship that night at Sara’s birthday party when we snuck over to that crematorium and had our first-ever séance.) We were in search of Dear Johnny in our own ways. But as our knees bobbed against one another’s and we formed a circle that night, I simply felt that brief but blissful form of excitement you feel when you’re a kid.

Now, the line about Roberta and her boyfriend “living in sin” is somewhat of a discussion among fans of the film, because word has it that from the beginning, Roberta’s character was written to be gay. I. Marlene King, writer, producer and director of Pretty Little Liars, was the writer on Now and Then. In earlier versions of the script, Chrissy says, “Roberta, for example, has chosen to be alternative, but she is still normal. She hasn’t been married four times or gone through a series of monogamous relationships…or wear all black. She’s happy. Aren’t you Roberta?” When the girls flash back to that summer when they were kids, we meet young Roberta (played by Christina Ricci), binding her chest and stumbling over her macho brothers wrestling in the hallway. Her mom died when she was four, and she is deeply bothered by it, refusing to succumb to any bullshit standards set aside for girls and the ways girls are supposed to dress or act.

Instead, Roberta is the girl at the softball game who’s throwing punches at boys or pranking her friends in a not-so-funny incident where she fakes drowning. She’s constantly testing her limits and the trust she so craves with the people in her life. But what she doesn’t yet understanding is that she needs to give others a chance to get through to her, too. Samantha (played by Gaby Hoffmann) is next to kin when it comes to tough-girl stuff because she’s in the midst of her parents’ divorce, and she’s completely in favor of rebelling against her clueless mother—which also means punching out a boy at a softball field if the moment calls for it, especially if she’s standing up for a friend. (I bet Sam is a Libra.) I used to wonder if there wasn’t more to Roberta and Sam’s relationship, especially because I could totally see Rosie O’Donnell and Demi Moore’s grown-up versions getting together and living “alternatively” as Chrissy puts it. Whatever happened in post-production to cause anyone to add in that line about Roberta’s boyfriend is a terrible shame.

Young Teeny (played by Thora Birch) is the girl who sits on her roof and memorizes lines from old movies playing on the big drive-in screen. Her parents are always hosting lavish parties while she floats about in her room upstairs, obsessing over actresses from the Golden Hollywood heyday. Teeny is down for everything and anything, but we quickly get the sense that it’s all smoke and mirrors and in truth, she’s the least experienced, at least for right now. She stuffs her bra with vanilla pudding-filled balloons to bide her time before she reaches adolescence. (She got the idea from the Wormer boys after they surprise-attack the girls with water balloons.) Sex, dating, and romance—it’s all mysterious and lusty to her and she is rushing to grow up. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Teeny is making all the girls take a quiz and she discovers she’s a sexual magnet, “attracting men from all four corners of the world.” The look on her face as she reads her results say it all–she’s googly-eyed over all this possibility.

Sam is nothing like Teeny, but she doesn’t try to act prudish, she just prefers to focus on other things, like books, magic, science, and what really happened to Dear Johnny. She’s the one with the bag of candles and cards who’s happy to tote her wares to the cemetery. Sam has to look out for her little sister, but she also has to contend with her mom’s new dating life. Here, she’s expected to act mature and mind her manners, while she sees her mom dressing differently and gushing over a man who isn’t her father. Her only way to cope is to escape, and her friends support that; in their not-as-R-rated way, they’re basically saying, “Fuck that. We’re your family.” Sam and Teeny make great friends because they’re so out of each other’s way and they so easily understand this place their at in their lives—with Sam’s parents’ divorce and Teeny’s parents being nearly as absent under the same roof.

Roberta and Chrissy have a special bond that’s set to the side too, because they’re so opposite yet they balance each other’s personalities to a tee. Chrissy (played by Ashleigh Aston Moore) feels Roberta is her best friend. I can’t imagine what Chrissy’s mom must think of that—what if Roberta were to track mud into her pristine home? Chrissy’s bedroom is perfectly tidy and manicured pink. She is completely sheltered by her mother’s discussions about sex—and probably still believes a garden hose and a watering can are involved. She’s the last in line when the girls hit the road on their bicycles, and she’s the first one to say, “I’m not doing that,” when she feels uncomfortable or nervous. But a little mild giggling and convincing and the girls have Chrissy believing in herself and feeling connected to them in no time. Despite her doubts that she isn’t as pretty or skinny as the other girls, Chrissy manages to find her place in the group by just being Chrissy. That’s why Roberta makes such a great best friend. For her, friendship and acceptance isn’t about appearances. Chrissy has a heart of gold. A promise is a promise with her.

There is purpose to these friendships in Now and Then like there is purpose to Chrissy’s naivety about sex, Samantha’s imaginative curiosities, Teeny’s desires for passion in romance and career, and Roberta’s capacity for strength and weakness in equal measure. See, it was easy for all of us little girls who loved the film to attach ourselves to a character we related to or liked a lot because we too were on the verge of something—and being on the verge of anything is a beautiful and surreal feeling. When you’re 11, or 12, or 13, you are a part of this magical in-between moment that connects childhood with adolescence, and the friends you have during those few years may be some of the most important friends you will ever have—not because of how long they’ll be in your life, but because they’ll be the first people on board in your life journey who are up for the same adventures you are, and they’ll challenge you somehow—maybe to get in touch with your emotions when you’re embarrassed you cried in front of them, maybe to remind you that you’re all in this together. It’s the age where you’re searching for something, anything, and you’re old enough to find those things with your friends.

It wasn’t that long after Now and Then that I became the class scapegoat—they had decided I was weird. Instead of leaving it at that, they just had to hammer away at my self-esteem for good measure. What happened to riding our bikes, playing in our backyards, jumping into swimming pools and playing slumber party games? Now, friendship was considered by how much you impressed some queen bee, how far you’d go to stake your coolness. An eighth grade girl named Tara once saved me from a bathroom incident where a girl I once thought was my friend was mocking and making fun of me. I thought, “Here’s a true Roberta.”

I treasure the time around 1995 with an appreciation that goes soul deep. Those friends opened my eyes to the kinds of friends I would look for later on in my life, hoping to attract by weeding out the fair-weathered friendships, hardened, jealous-types, and egocentric bullies. Forget the thrill of being popular, well-liked, admired and noticed—those accolades are blips on the maps of our lives. Instead, relish in your weirdness, the glue that makes you who you are, and remember that embracing something weird is not a bad thing, it’s actually a wonderful thing; that’s the lesson I learned as a kid, when we snuck in to see Now and Then for the umpteenth time. Summer has always been a magical time where childhood lingers, and every time I get on a swingset again, or have a hankering for a push pop, or throw on my Now and Then soundtrack, I think of my childhood and feel invigorated with that rush of youth. I think of Taylor and Sara, and a time when we were so eager to make our own adventures. I also think of those four girls from the Gaslight Addition; somehow they affected my life by making me appreciate what it means to be and have a true friend in this wild world.

All for one and one for all.

Kim Hoffman is a writer for AfterEllen.com and Curve Magazine. She currently keeps things weird in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter: @the_hoff