Will filmmakers ever be tired of tackling the coming-of-age tale? Based on the slate at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, the answer appears to be a resounding no. I saw three different films that told the stories of young people struggling to make their way over the threshold of adulthood. Set in locations ranging from 1980s Mexico to the present-day Bronx to a Midwestern everytown straight out of the CW programming lineup, these films have little in common on the surface, but the themes that they tackle are near-universal.
This is Not Berlin (Hari Sama)
It’s 1986 and the World Cup is about to kick off in Mexico. But best friends Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) and Gera (José Antonio Toledano) are more interested in partying with Gera’s older sister, rebellious rock band frontwoman Rita (Ximena Romo), than they are in the impending soccer tournament. When Carlos, who has a knack for fixing things, fixes the synth that Rita’s band uses, the boys are rewarded with a trip down a hedonistic rabbit hole into Mexico’s underground nightlife scene.
Carlos doesn’t feel as though he fits in with his peers at school, who are mostly interested in challenging other students at other schools to fight. Nor does he fit in with his family — his dad is pressuring him to become an engineer, while his mom (Roma’s Marina de Tavira) drugs herself and sleeps all day, leaving Carlos to care for his younger brother. However, where Carlos does fit in is among the experimental performance artists of the underground. He begins spending more and more time with a photographer named Nico (Mauro Sanchez Navarro), who takes Carlos under his wing (though this as at least partially driven by Nico’s desire to sleep with the almost preternaturally beautiful boy). Meanwhile, Gera is coming to terms with his own sexuality and jealous of how Carlos has instantly been accepted into this sexually liberated circle — and, in the process, essentially abandoned his closest friend.
Directed by Hari Sama, who co-wrote the semi-autobiographical script with Rodrigo Ordoñez and also co-stars as Carlos’ free-spirited uncle, This is Not Berlin is the coming-of-age film as a fever dream, presented through a dizzying array of sounds and images that will make you feel as though you’re on nearly as many drugs as the film’s young protagonist. A fitting companion piece to John Carney’s Sing Street, the film brings the rebellious spirit of the 1980s art scene to life, embracing all of the era’s fire while also reminding us of its darker side (primarily via drug overdoses and the AIDS crisis).
The sequences involving Carlos’ embrace of his new lifestyle and his involvement in performance art as protest — against right-wing conformity and the World Cup — are vibrant and inspiring, shot and edited in an energetic, frenetic way that will have you wanting to dive through the screen and join him in his exploits. Being set on the eve of the world’s biggest sporting event only adds to the sense of anticipation that courses through the movie’s veins. But once the sun comes back up and Carlos goes back to his regular life, This is Not Berlin becomes much more predictable, leaving you, like Carlos, waiting anxiously for the sun to set and for the real fun to begin again. Yet despite occasionally drifting down derivative paths, This is Not Berlin is never not entertaining.
Goldie (Sam de Jong)
The sophomore feature from filmmaker Sam De Jong, Goldie tells the story of the titular character (played by model Slick Woods in her acting debut), a wannabe dancer in the Bronx who has to balance pursuing her dreams with caring for her two younger sisters after her troubled mother lands in jail. Goldie thinks her big break is finally on the horizon when she lands a gig as a backup dancer in a local rapper’s music video — now all she needs to do is collect the various items she has fantasized about in order to create a memorable look. Chief among them? An expensive bright yellow fur coat that Goldie has been eyeing for quite some time but never had enough cash to splurge on. The coat is so much more than a coat — to Goldie, it’s her ticket out of obscurity and into the big time.
When Goldie’s mom is abruptly arrested the day before the big video shoot, Goldie grabs her sisters and flees the shelter where they have been living with barely more than the clothes on their backs. From there, she embarks on a quest that takes her to various friends and contacts around the Bronx, including a former teacher who encourages her to call child services rather than try to take care of her sisters on her own. (Naturally distrustful of the system, Goldie refuses.) Stealing wigs from the bathroom of a party thrown by a neighborhood nemesis, hawking her mother’s pills, pretending to be seduced by a former flame so that she can steal his wallet — Goldie will do whatever it takes to make sure that she is the star of this shoot. But her single-minded vision ends up blinding her to the bleak reality of the situation she and her sisters are in.
Goldie is an impeccably stylish film. De Jong uses colorful hand-drawn animation layered almost graffiti-like on top of shots to introduce the various characters Goldie meets along her journey; combined with the childlike voice announcing each character’s entrance, the overall impression is that of a gritty children’s storybook, a Brothers Grimm story set against the vibrant backdrop of the Bronx. Woods has a unique and undeniable screen presence that makes her fascinating to watch even as Goldie’s decision-making grows increasingly frustrating.
Unfortunately, where this visually stunning film flounders is whenever anyone opens their mouths. Woods’ delivery of her dialogue is by far the weakest part of her performance, and the same goes for the majority of the supporting cast. The combination of some relatively inexperienced actors and a less-than-nuanced script results in some distractingly stiff performances. Even so, Goldie’s desperation and the misguided actions it leads her to are always possible to empathize with, centered in the very real fear that if she doesn’t become famous, she’ll suffer the same fate as her mother and so many others around her. De Jong forces us to face how few real opportunities are given to girls like Goldie, and to understand why someone would be willing to risk it all even to snatch a mere wisp of a dream.
Knives and Skin (Jennifer Reeder)
The neon-hued love child of Twin Peaks and Riverdale, Knives and Skin chronicles the strange happenings in a small Midwestern town after high school sophomore Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) suddenly disappears after refusing to give in to the sexual advances of her jock boyfriend, Andy (Ty Olwin). Before she vanishes, Carolyn showcases something along the lines of mystical powers as she carves a glowing “C” on Andy’s forehead with her fingernail; her glasses, the only evidence she leaves behind, also pulsate with a mysterious glow. Her mom, who leads the school acapella group, is so distraught by her daughter’s disappearance that she refuses to let the police touch anything in Carolyn’s room, starts wearing items of Carolyn’s clothing to school, and even makes romantic advances at Andy. And that’s not even the weirdest stuff happening.
In the aftermath of Carolyn’s disappearance, the darkest secrets of her friends and their parents begin to see the murky light of day. One of Carolyn’s closest friends is stealing her mom’s dirty underwear and selling it around town — including to teachers at her school. (Said mom is too doped up on pills to even notice.) The pregnant wife of the local sheriff is having an affair with the father of one of Carolyn’s friends who recently lost his job and now earns a living dressed as a clown. (Yes, there is clown sex.) In the meantime, the a capella group keeps practicing hits from the 1980s. It’s a lot to take in. In fact, it is way too much.
One has to admire writer-director Jennifer Reeder’s audacity in creating such a stylized, surreal landscape for her characters to wallow in, but the weirdness quickly outlasts its welcome in Knives and Skin. The characters are all woefully unlikable and uninteresting; their over-accentuated quirks fill voids that should be occupied by personality. The actors all seem out of their depth and aren’t helped by the cringe-worthy script, which seems to be aiming for the cracked-whip snark of Heathers but falls unfortunately flat. Perhaps this was somehow Reeder’s intention — all part of the film’s intense stylistic experiment — but it doesn’t work.
The problem with Knives and Skin, when compared with the aforementioned explorations of suburban rot, is that the end product is all style and no substance. The film is gorgeous to look at, but at a running time of close to two hours, even the most delicious visuals aren’t enough to keep one engaged in a story that seemed to have very little point.
Conclusion
Of the three coming-of-age films I saw at Tribeca this year, This is Not Berlin is by far the most complete package. While I cannot recommend them all, they all stand out in different ways for their unique visions of this much-done genre.
What do you think? Which of the above takes on the coming-of-age tale sounds most appealing to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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