When I was a kid, I used to run away from home.
I’d pile on all my favorite things, all my most special clothes, until I could barely walk in all the layers and stuff my plastic purses full of necessities for my new life, like Barbie dolls and plastic dinosaurs.
But I only ever got a far as the end of driveway. I just sat in the car and imagined what my family would be reduced to without my presence. Eventually I went in again. After all he point was only to make a scene, I only wanted to show that my emotions were serious.
I suppose its no coincidence that many coming of age films feature runaways. The coming of age plot is, after all, the search for self-realized through the search for something external. It doesn’t really matter what the search was originally for: an old home, a long lost father or a missed connection; in the end, it’s the journey, both literal and figurative, that matters.
In Electrick Children, the 2012 debut of writer-director Rebecca Thomas, 15-year-old Rachel (Julia Garner) leaves her fundamentalist Mormon community to search for the father of her baby, whom she believes is the true love God has chosen for her. Likewise, Blue Car, a 2002 film written and directed by Karen Moncrieff, introduces us to Meg Denning (Agnes Bruckner), a 16-year-old girl who longs for a father figure, a parent who will love her unconditionally and believe in her specialness. Both Meg and Rachel set out on the road, not sure exactly what they’re looking for and what they’ll find standing at its end.
Electrick Children has a fiercely original set up: a sheltered religious teenager listens a song (a cover of “Hanging on the Telephone”) on a blue cassette tape. It’s the first rock song, even the first secular song she’s ever heard and as she listens, dancing alone in her nightgown, she experiences great pleasure, suggesting her first orgasm. When she later finds she has become pregnant, she is sure the singer on the tape is the father of the baby.
Despite all the sermons she has grown up hearing, about the evils of rock music and immaculate conception, no one in the community is willing to believe Rachel’s pregnancy is a miracle and religious leaders blame her brother “Mr. Will” (Liam Aiken) for impregnating her and try to force Rachel into a shotgun marriage.
Instead, she packs her things and escapes to the glittering lights of the nearest city, Las Vegas. A lost little lamb in the big city, Rachel limps along until she meets a group of skaters, musicians, and stoners. Naive Rachel and Mr. Will, who follows along behind her, would be easily exploitable prey, but because this is a movie, they are taken in by the group, who recognize them as fellow outsiders in need of their support.
Along the way, Clyde (Rory Culkin), a sensitive skateboarder notices Rachel and they begin to fall in love with each other. Clyde’s friends tease him for desiring Rachel, as a pregnant girl she is “damaged goods,” he doesn’t care.
Electrick Children is a gorgeous film, stuffed with vivid colors and textures, beautiful scenery and indie rock. However, one might view it as troubling that the origin of Rachel’s pregnancy is never revealed. Commenters on IMDb suggest the film hints that Rachel was drugged and raped by her stepfather, the leader of the religious community, though this is never addressed in the film. Though Rachel’s views of both the religious and secular worlds complicate as she begins to think for herself, one thing that never changes is her belief that God fathered her child. In the main text of the film, her relationship with Clyde, who offers to marry her and raise the baby, suggests a modern update of relationship between Mary and Joseph in The Bible.
As Blue Car begins, Meg Denning is the new girl at school. Her parents have just separated and she is sullen and depressed. Her mother seems to work all hours, leaving Meg to take care of her troubled younger sister, Lily. Lily is taking their father’s disappearance much harder than Meg, refusing to eat and making delusional statements about her appearance and identity. Meg resents having to look after her and begins to hate her mother for failing to notice both sisters’ unhappiness.
In school, Meg tries her best to fade into the background, but all this changes when her English teacher, Mr. Auster (David Strathairn) begins to take a shine to her. Auster tells her she has the potential to be brilliant poet, if only she will allow herself to express the true depth of the pain and anger she feels and put it into words. He gives her a light at the end of the tunnel, a national poetry competition in Florida that she is a shoo-in to win, as long as she can find a way to get there.
As imagined Meg begins to come into her voice, with Auster’s guidance. Though his influence is initially set up as a positive force, as the film draws on, it slowly becomes clear that Auster’s own goals are tainting Meg’s newly realized talent. Meg constantly clashes with her mother and drives away everyone else in her life who had supported her or attempted to get through her hard exterior. She comes to view her father as a villain for leaving her and her mother as wicked for working, refusing to see them as three-dimensional people with their own lives.
From here, the film’s trajectory is familiar. As viewers, we are not surprised when the older teacher takes advantage of his young protege, but Blue Car runs through this familiar plot in a way that is genuinely affecting to watch. The film refuses to allow either Meg or us as viewer to see her parents as cardboard cut-outs. Meg ultimately recognizes her mother is a person as well as a parent, an imperfect, broken person who had made missteps raising her but is trying her best. Even her father, who we only see briefly, comes across as well-meaning and kind, a marked contrast to the picture of him in Meg’s bitter poem.
In both films, the road ends with a discovery that the road never really ends. Self-discovery is a life long project, but at least Rachel and Meg know where to begin.
_____________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.