2015 Sundance Film Festival Excellence In Cinematography Award Dramatic
A refreshing antidote to the usual creepy filmic view of a relationship between an adult man and a teenage girl (eg the peculiarly overrated An Education). This is a comedy in which the man is the one who is manipulated. Doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs but director Marielle Heller, greatly helped by lead Bel Powley, treats the sexual relationship with the same lightness of touch that Louis Malle did mother-and-son incest in Murmur of the Heart. Warm-hearted, funny and truthful. Going against the grain of standard Hollywood produce, it’s also great to see a film that portrays sex as fun and drugs as seedy rather than vice versa.
It must be my age, but I just could not get into this movie. I'd read the critics' reviews (very positive) and I'd seen the trailer (which looked okay), so even though I did not think the subject matter was likely to be "funny" or "provocative", I thought I'd give it a try. Seeing the 70s so brilliantly recreated was fun, but not much else was. I did not gel with the main character, and quite frankly the plot seemed pretty daft and pointless. Yeah, good luck to the girl, very natural she should want to do what all teens do and experiment with sex, but I did not enjoy watching it, a few funny moments notwithstanding. Like I said, must be my age!
I watched to the end hoping it would get better but it did not. I wasted 98 minutes of my life. Bel Powley is a good actor but she deserves a good film. The adult characters are cardboard images of feckless shallow individuals. I can't tell whether its trying to be a satire on the 70s or some kind of "women winning through" transcendent story, but to me it's just light porn with a few mildly amusing jokes. And I would not want my teenage grandchild to see it, it is so cynical. I think she would see through it but she deserves better.