A thirteen year old girl is living in her own private suburban hell. Disliked and unpopular at school (where she is bullied widely) and little regarded at home - where she comes a sad third to her little-miss-perfect ballerina sister and her nerdy (but smart) older brother.
(Who doesn't like girls because he "wants to go to a good school.")
How rare a subject this is for a professional film, even a low budget one. My mind has span out for a parallel in the movie world - underground or over ground - and come up near empty. The nearest I could come up with is Kes (a brilliant English film from 1969), but that was set in another time and another place.
Maybe also About A Boy (with Hugh Grant), but that was a comedy with a hero about to come to the rescue. Rather than here, where any rescue is going to have to come from within.
You could also throw in a few foreign films - such as Pixote - but these films are often about utter desperation (and even hunger) a million miles from the "safe" American suburbs of modern New Jersey.
With this Tod Solondz won the Sundance Film Festival Best Picture award of 1996 and you can clearly see why. If independent cinema has any role to play in the world it is telling the small private stories that would otherwise go untold.
(While I might be talking prematurely here I am not sure he is a rounded film maker who could take on a variety of projects. However he is more than welcome to prove me wrong!)
Most people are not writers, diarists or raconteurs. However they make small observations and notes which they store away in some cubby-hole in their heads. Occasionally stage comedians tap in to these shared memories and observations - such as the problems of your first kiss, for example - and the audience laughs. What you might call "the laugh of recognition." This film is entirely built around the laugh of recognition or something very much like it.
We have often heard how cruel children can be. The truth is that they have not yet learnt to hide their true selves. While some may grow to be wiser, all that normally happens is that the hatred or dislike of something or someone becomes hidden, unsaid or even intellectualised. Have you ever noticed how childlike arguments become when someone starts losing an argument? Name-calling never really leaves us!
(And if you don't believe me you should read some of my private messages sent to me via the IMDb board!)
Credit Heather Matazzo (as Dawn Wiener) for carrying the whole film on her tiny sloping shoulders. I would be intrigued to learn her technique and approach to the subject. Is she a method actress? Did she snub the "school bullies" at the lunch truck? Pretend is all real? Has she had a hard childhood - to that point at least? Given the targets and script it is hard to see how she could have been any better.
Within the film she forms a strange relationship with a smaller "special education" bully who says that she is going to be "raped." But so empty is her life that she goes along with it and call the boys bluff. What follows is the only real piece of depth that the movie aspires to and isn't easy viewing.
Her parents aren't really fleshed out and are rather two dimensional and one note. Parents do have favourites, but they can never be as cold as they appear here. At least their total disrespect doesn't turn violent!
The rest of the plot involves the formation of a garage band lead by the wonderfully empty headed Eric Mabius - a would-be Jon Bon Jovi with the IQ of a fish. Heather forms a crush on him that might as well be with the real Jon Bon Jovi for all the chance it has of going somewhere. However it allows for some comic interaction with the older boy who she feeds up with home-made snacks. The meeting of two daydream believers!
How will she grow up? Will she find her place in the world? We simply don't know. However she has some intelligence and a lot of nerve and that could serve her well. One day soon the real world will come flooding in and she will laugh at what she once believed and once said. Growing up isn't easy, but nothing really is...
(Who doesn't like girls because he "wants to go to a good school.")
How rare a subject this is for a professional film, even a low budget one. My mind has span out for a parallel in the movie world - underground or over ground - and come up near empty. The nearest I could come up with is Kes (a brilliant English film from 1969), but that was set in another time and another place.
Maybe also About A Boy (with Hugh Grant), but that was a comedy with a hero about to come to the rescue. Rather than here, where any rescue is going to have to come from within.
You could also throw in a few foreign films - such as Pixote - but these films are often about utter desperation (and even hunger) a million miles from the "safe" American suburbs of modern New Jersey.
With this Tod Solondz won the Sundance Film Festival Best Picture award of 1996 and you can clearly see why. If independent cinema has any role to play in the world it is telling the small private stories that would otherwise go untold.
(While I might be talking prematurely here I am not sure he is a rounded film maker who could take on a variety of projects. However he is more than welcome to prove me wrong!)
Most people are not writers, diarists or raconteurs. However they make small observations and notes which they store away in some cubby-hole in their heads. Occasionally stage comedians tap in to these shared memories and observations - such as the problems of your first kiss, for example - and the audience laughs. What you might call "the laugh of recognition." This film is entirely built around the laugh of recognition or something very much like it.
We have often heard how cruel children can be. The truth is that they have not yet learnt to hide their true selves. While some may grow to be wiser, all that normally happens is that the hatred or dislike of something or someone becomes hidden, unsaid or even intellectualised. Have you ever noticed how childlike arguments become when someone starts losing an argument? Name-calling never really leaves us!
(And if you don't believe me you should read some of my private messages sent to me via the IMDb board!)
Credit Heather Matazzo (as Dawn Wiener) for carrying the whole film on her tiny sloping shoulders. I would be intrigued to learn her technique and approach to the subject. Is she a method actress? Did she snub the "school bullies" at the lunch truck? Pretend is all real? Has she had a hard childhood - to that point at least? Given the targets and script it is hard to see how she could have been any better.
Within the film she forms a strange relationship with a smaller "special education" bully who says that she is going to be "raped." But so empty is her life that she goes along with it and call the boys bluff. What follows is the only real piece of depth that the movie aspires to and isn't easy viewing.
Her parents aren't really fleshed out and are rather two dimensional and one note. Parents do have favourites, but they can never be as cold as they appear here. At least their total disrespect doesn't turn violent!
The rest of the plot involves the formation of a garage band lead by the wonderfully empty headed Eric Mabius - a would-be Jon Bon Jovi with the IQ of a fish. Heather forms a crush on him that might as well be with the real Jon Bon Jovi for all the chance it has of going somewhere. However it allows for some comic interaction with the older boy who she feeds up with home-made snacks. The meeting of two daydream believers!
How will she grow up? Will she find her place in the world? We simply don't know. However she has some intelligence and a lot of nerve and that could serve her well. One day soon the real world will come flooding in and she will laugh at what she once believed and once said. Growing up isn't easy, but nothing really is...