For many of us, high school is a time we'd just as soon not revisit. Caught as most of us are in the throes of discovering our identities, the missteps are plentiful, often embarrassing, and possibly even shameful, given the clearer perspective of adulthood. We like to think of ourselves as more or less the finished products we (eventually) come to be as adults, but back in the laboratory of our youth, trying to discover our particular chemical combination, most of us were anything but solidified.
There's a reason I have scrupulously avoided any school reunions from my hometown in upstate New York, beyond just the potential awkwardness of seeing people you barely knew more than three decades ago, and I believe it has something to do with my embarrassment of people having seen me then in such an unformed shape.
A pair of films at this year's Tribeca Film Festival speak to the high school experience from wildly different vantage points and to seemingly disparate conclusions, providing distinct perspectives on the experience of youthful indoctrination.
The first film, Quinn Shephard's Blame, was made by the almost impossibly precocious 22-year-old writer/director who first wrote the screenplay when she was 15, and refined it alongside her mother, who also acted as the film's casting director. In that, her mother was exceptionally prescient. Despite its indie leanings and largely inexperienced actors, the cast creates a believable atmosphere, which is much easier said than done.
Shephard plays Abigail, a fragile girl just off an extended stint in a psychiatric ward for reasons we never quite discern, and forced to go back into the simmering genpop tinderbox of her old school. Her breakdown seems to have taken place in full view of her peers, several of whom aren't disposed toward letting her forget it. Melissa (Nadia Alexander), in particular, seems hell-bent on destroying her. She calls her "Sybil" after the famous (and controversial) psychiatric patient from the '70s, and attempts to call her out and embarrass her at every turn, to the amusement of one friend (Sarah Mezzanote), and consternation of another (Tessa Albertson).
Initially, poor Abigail seems defenseless against Melissa and her ilk, including a pair of pigish boys (Owen Campbell and Luke Slattery; you can squint your eyes and see young versions of James Spader and Johnny Depp if you are so inclined), but that all changes in theater class. Led by new teacher Mr. Woods (Chris Messina), as they prepare a showcase of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Abigail turns out to be an exceptionally good actress (and a method devotee: On the day she is to do line readings as Laura Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie, she brings with her a small glass horse, and pretends to walk down the hallways as if with a horrible limp), and one that Mr. Woods takes an immediate shine toward.
This further infuriates the irascible Melissa, who wants the role that Abigail was bequeathed, so she attempts to step up her harassment in order to bully her out of the way. You can kind of see where this is going, given the constant allusion to Arthur Miller's play about adultery, coercion and hysterical mob justice. As Abigail and Mr. Woods become closer, and her crush on him becomes a full-on fixation, Melissa plots her revenge against her rival, all of which comes to a head on the day of the production.
The film is filled with a series of high-school tropes (including mean girls, insufferable boys and delicate flowers), but the strength of the screenplay relies largely upon Shephard's ability to use these cliches, and then subvert our expectations of them. Abigail, it turns out, is more than capable of her own kind of emotional manipulation, and Melissa, for all her bluster and cruelty, turns out to have pretty legit reasons for her behavior. The film deftly avoids the kind of Breakfast Club claptrap that asks the characters to reveal themselves utterly and it still offers enough insight into what makes the girls tick to feel somewhat illuminating. The last shot, well crafted and adroitly acted by Shephard and Alexander, stays with you in a surprisingly satisfying way.
Jordan Ross' Thumper also gets into the heads of its characters, but to an utterly different effect. Set in a contemporary, rough-hewn high school in Southern California, it presents a milieu of dangerous disaffection and the threat of considerable violence. Eliza Taylor plays Kat, a hip and seemingly carefree teen new to the school. With her style and confident manner, she is almost immediately embraced by Rhonda (Brigette Kali Canales), and ogled by Beaver (Daniel Webber), a banged up kid trying to hook himself into the drug dealing scene of his friend, Troy (Grant Harvey).
Troy works for his cousin, the terrifying Wyatt (Pablo Schrieber), a veteran of Iraq, and now a wild-eyed meth cook whose paranoia and propensity for instant violence makes him an intimidating figure to the kids who buy his product. As Kat becomes embraced by the crew around Wyatt, something seems a bit peculiar about her from the get-go, including the fact that for all her swaggy down-for-whatever vibe, she never wants to do the drugs proffered to her. The reason for this, we come to find out, is because "Kat" is really an undercover cop, working for the thoroughly unpleasant and coldly insensitive supervisor (Lena Heady, better known as Cersei from Game of Thrones) to infiltrate this drug circuit and take down Wyatt.
Shifting back and forth between a saucy teenager and a newly divorced mother, whose young son is becoming ever more estranged from her, "Kat" has to constantly redefine herself. Eventually she becomes emotionally close to Beaver, who, it turns out, has an abusive father and a developmentally disabled younger brother he's trying to send to a proper school, even as the net around her deception begins to close tighter around her.
The film is smartly executed by Ross in his feature debut, and well shot by cinematographer Doug Emmett, but it really succeeds on the strength of Taylor and Schreiber (half-brother to the equally dedicated and better-known Liev), who play their roles with impressive grit and commitment. While the character development of Kat is on the thin side -- other than spending time with her disassociated son, we rarely get to see her in an unguarded moment -- Taylor is still able to make us deeply worry for her. Schreiber, meanwhile, imbues Wyatt with a fast-twitch menace, shifting from laughing as if in on the joke to unbridled, violent fury in a moment's notice. Even with Wyatt, though, the film takes pains to give us momentary scenes of his domestic life -- when we first see him he's animatedly playing with his two young kids -- enough to make him that much more terrifyingly real.
For its peculiar lapses (we never see Kat working with anyone other than her boss, whose agenda is maddeningly aloof; and, given the danger of her position, she seems oddly unable to properly defend herself, or even use a gun effectively), Ross' film offers a potent immediacy that can't be denied. The bonds of connection between these high schoolers seem craven and inevitable, like blood spiraling down a drain.
Both schools are fraught with danger, with Abigail's school more of an emotional powder keg and Kat's a very real physical threat, but what's interesting is watching how the characters are forced to deal with the reality of their situation. Abigail finds solace in being on stage, becoming a character different from what she knows herself to be, while Kat's version of method acting puts her very much in further jeopardy.
If people are largely unformed as teenagers, it's because we're all busy playing one role or another. "All the world's a stage," Shakespeare wrote, "And all the men and women merely players." Never is that more true than in a high school homeroom.
MovieStyle on 04/28/2017