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![[The truth about girls]](girls970425.gif)
"ALL OVER ME" OFFERS A RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE DOUBT AND ANGUISH OF FEMALE ADOLESCENCE. |
BY NELL BERNSTEIN + + + + "All Over Me"
P L U S
"Romy"
"Volcano"
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PEOPLE are already likening "All Over Me" to Larry Clark's "Kids," a comparison that more than misses the point. "Kids" wasn't about what it's like to be a teenage boy in New York City; it was about what it's like to be Clark, loitering on the fringes of Washington Square Park, gawking at the boys on their skateboards but failing to imagine what might be going on behind their blank stares. "All Over Me" -- Alex and Sylvia Sichel's low-key look at two young women growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen -- is shot from the inside out. It's about what it's like to be its young subjects -- not what it's like to look at them -- and it succeeds beautifully at capturing the inner life of girls. It's no surprise that this film was made by sisters (Sylvia wrote the screenplay and Alex directed), so piercingly does it convey the love/hate relationship between two young women trying to figure themselves out with and against each other. "All Over Me" is funny in exactly the quiet, painful way that adolescence often is. You might suspect you'll laugh later, but right now it hurts too much. Coming-of-age movies spring eternal, but they rarely have much to do with what it's actually like to grow up. One of the things that John Hughes et al. keep missing is that, while heterosexual adventures may seem like the main story, the real romance -- and the real heartbreak -- of girlhood is best friendship. Claude (Alison Folland) and Ellen (Tara Subkoff) are 15-year-old best friends who've spent all their time together as long they can remember. Claude would be happy to keep it that way; she's still endlessly entertained by hanging out with Ellen in Claude's cramped bedroom. But Ellen is beginning to get bored -- a dangerous boredom that makes her twitch with restlessness and pick fights with Claude as an excuse to bolt out the door and into the street. As in "Kids," apartments here are merely launching pads -- life happens on the streets. For Ellen, those streets are drug-laced, treacherous and usually lead to Mark (Cole Hauser), her menacing boyfriend. Staggering down the sidewalk on impossibly high heels, her bra straps perennially exposed, Subkoff's Ellen is so skinny she looks like her bones are about to snap. But she's no easy victim. A fierce, narrow will propels her toward a future that Claude -- who lumbers sturdily along the same streets on roller-skates -- eventually realizes she doesn't want to share. From the very first scene, what distinguishes the Sichels' characters from those in "Kids" is that all of them -- even the nasty Mark -- have subtext. Sylvia Sichel's spare script leaves plenty of room for Alex's Cassavetes-like interest in faces -- how much they can convey when words have reached their limit -- and the young cast rises to the challenge. Beneath her ready-for-anything bravado, Subkoff telegraphs a doubt and anguish that are matched by the helpless love behind Folland's smooth-faced calm. A greedy weakness seeps through Mark's cruelty. When Claude, depressed because Ellen has ditched her for Mark, drowns her sorrows in a carton of ice cream, regret and longing leak from the corners of her mouth as she eats. Ostensibly the weaker of the two -- "Everyone knows I'm your dog," she tells Ellen -- Claude is the one who will eventually find the courage to strike out on her own. When she finally lets herself fall in love with an adorable pink-haired girl rocker (Leisha Hailey), she smiles for what seems like the first time, and her face is transformed. Folland's performance makes you understand why people can't stop making coming-of-age movies. Her Claude isn't quite sure who she wants to be yet, but you can see a more certain self straining to break through, and it makes her beautiful. Perhaps the worst of the current slanders against adolescents is that they are amoral. In fact, moral struggle is central to adolescence (why do you think teenagers are so self-righteous?). Adolescents see right through the adult world at the same time that they're starting to look deeper into themselves. In movies about girls, the ensuing transformation usually gets played out as a "makeover" -- a new hairstyle and a new boyfriend take the character over the threshold into a new life. The transformations Claude and Ellen go through in "All Over Me" are more than physical, and much more complicated. It's clear that as much is lost as is gained when the butterfly abandons the cocoon. With the exception of Wilson Cruz -- so charming as Ricky on "My So-Called Life," but looking a little lost on the big screen -- the supporting actors give equally nuanced performances. Pat Briggs, as a gay musician in his 20s who moves into Claude's building, is a relief every time he crosses the screen, his warmth and self-assurance indicating that these confused kids -- or at least some of them -- might one day grow into themselves, too. The last year has seen a wave of small films -- "Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Foxfire," "Girls Town" -- heralded for putting girls at the center and giving their experience credence. "All Over Me" comes closer than any of them to capturing not just what it's like to be a girl but what it's like to be a person. April 25, 1997 Nell Bernstein is an editor at YO! (Youth Outlook), a youth newspaper produced by Pacific News Service.
P R E V I O U S R E V I E W S"Kissed" By Laura Miller (04/18/97) "Grosse Point Blank" By Stephanie Zacharek (04/11/97) "Chasing Amy" By Charles Taylor (04/11/97) "The Saint" By Charles Taylor (04/04/97) "The Daytrippers" By Robin Dougherty (03/28/97) "The Devil's Own" By Charles Taylor (03/28/97) BROWSE OUR MOVIE ARCHIVES PHOTO BY BILL FOLEY | © 1997 FINE LINE FEATURES |