My Old Ass: Poignant and deeply personal

My Old Ass (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug use, sexual candor and frequent profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.22.24

Canadian writer/director Megan Park’s new film is one of the summer’s sweetest surprises: a deeply moving, intimately emotional, and tartly humorous coming-of-age saga ... but not in the way you’d expect.

 

Although Elliott (Maisy Stella, left) doesn't initially believe that a mysterious newcomer
(Aubrey Plaza) is her older self, doubts are erased quickly ... which opens the door to
all manner of questions.

Park’s nuanced skill with interpersonal relationships is impressive. Every one of the nine key characters is well sculpted, and persuasive played by a roster of mostly unknown talent. Her unerring ear for dialogue is equally superb; no wrong notes are hit during the many relaxed chats, confessions and ruminations. The goofy, flirty and often profane banter, between the teenage protagonist and her friends, feels just as natural.

The crucial message — so simple, yet profound — is that life is full of change. We need to cherish every moment, because one never knows if it might be the last time in that place, or with those people, or enjoying a particular activity.

 

We’ve all thought it: If I knew then, what I know now, I’d have paid more attention.

 

All this said, Park presents this moral in a most unusual manner.

 

The time is present day, the setting Canada’s gorgeous Muskoka Lakes region, near the southern tip of Ontario, 140 miles above Toronto. The place practically screams youthful innocence; cinematographer Kristen Correll’s gorgeous tableaus could be framed and hung in prestigious museums.

 

Free-spirited Elliott (Maisy Stella), two weeks away from heading off to university, is making the most of each day with besties Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks). They’re introduced in a small outboard boat, as Elliott motors them to a remote island, where she intends to celebrate her 18th birthday by tripping on mushrooms with them, and spending the night at their improvised campsite.

 

By doing so, she has blown off dinner with her family: her father Tom (Alain Goulem), mother Kathy (Maria Dizzia) and younger brothers Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) and Spencer (Carter Trozzolo). The family tableau is quietly awkward; they even baked a cake, which Spencer took pains to decorate.

 

(Elliott later insists that she informed her mother of these plans, and Kathy graciously acknowledges that may have been the case ... but it’s far more likely that the girl gave no thought to how her family might wish to celebrate her birthday with her.)

 

The 2019 Oscar Shorts: Good things in small packages

The 2019 Oscar Shorts (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Not rated, and perhaps too intense for young viewers
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.31.20

A droll familial theme runs through last year’s Academy Award-nominated short subjects: Two of the animated entries are titled Daughter and Sister, while two live-action entries are titled Brotherhood and A Sister.

Can even a doting father survive an encounter with his daughter's
impossible hair?

Family also is key to Hair Love and The Neighbor’s Window, which makes one wonder if this is design, rather than coincidence.

And while numerous entries involve solemn or even grim topics — no doubt reflecting the increasingly agitated state of real world events — the collective package is by no means a slog through wrist-slashing despair, as was the case last year. For which we can be grateful.

The live-action entries kick off with Belgian director Delphine Girard’s suspenseful Une soeur (A Sister), which begins placidly, as a couple takes a late-night drive; Alie (Selma Alaoui) chats on her cell phone, discussing child-care details with her sister. The tableau seems innocuous … until Girard shifts to an emergency call center, where an operator (Veerle Baetens) takes a call, and the same conversation repeats.

And we suddenly realize that Alie isn’t chatting capriciously; she’s in real trouble — the driver (Guillaume Duhesme) is no friend — and trying desperately, cleverly, to get help. Tension builds as the sharp-witted operator, deducing the scenario, adjusts on the fly; the camera mostly holds on Baetens, who does a terrific job. The guy in the car grows increasingly suspicious as the “conversation” continues, until…

Saria, a brutal slice of recent history, comes from Bryan Buckley, who also was nominated in this category for 2012’s Asad, a coming-of-age fable about a Somali boy struggling to survive in his war-torn land.

Inspired by an actual 2017 event, Buckley’s new film focuses on Saria (Estefanía Tellez) and Ximena (Gabriela Ramírez), two orphaned sisters who — along with scores of other young girls — endure daily abuse and hardship as “residents” of Guatemala’s Virgen de La Asuncion Safe Home (a designation that is beyond ironic). The food is awful, the girls are worked mercilessly, and constantly demeaned by a guard (Imelda Castro) who can’t be bothered with names, and refers to them solely as “little bitches.”

Occasional gatherings with orphaned boys allow brief respites … but can young romance blossom amid such harsh surroundings?

While We're Young: Sly social commentary

While We're Young (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Getting older is difficult enough, in terms of physical and emotional challenges, without having to worry about the need to remain “relevant.”

In the aftermath of a truly silly consciousness-raising experience, Josh (Ben Stiller) and
Cornelia (Naomi Watts) attempt to make sense of the previous evening, to determine
whether any useful insight might have been achieved. Sadly, they've a ways to go before
any genuinely helpful epiphanies.

Perversely, though, that issue has become more challenging in our modern world, with cultural and technological imperatives changing not by the decade, not even by the year, but at times — seemingly — by the month. More than ever before, it feels like only agile young minds have a hope of keeping up.

But is “keeping up” really that important?

Intellectual obsolescence is the core issue of Noah Baumbach’s newest character study, but the writer/director actually has much more on his mind. Part comedy, part drama and all biting social commentary, While We’re Young is a perceptive take on 21st century fortysomethings who worry that life is passing them by ... or, worse yet, long ago left town on the last bus.

Mid-life crises are nothing new, of course; every generation crosses this more-or-less halfway point with varying degrees of the same angst. But Hollywood didn’t really discover the genre until 1955’s The Seven Year Itch, and most of the topic’s classics are more recent: 1973’s Save the Tiger, 1979’s Manhattan, 1999’s American Beauty and 2004’s Sideways come quickly to mind.

While We’re Young definitely belongs in their company. Baumbach has an unerring ear for troubled interpersonal dynamics, dating back to his Oscar-nominated script for 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. That said, some of his subsequent films — however insightful — spent too much time with unpalatable or downright mean-spirited characters; it’s difficult to embrace any message when delivered by, say, the misanthropic title character in Greenberg.

But Baumbach’s approach has been gentler of late, starting with the forlorn misfit played so winningly by Greta Gerwig, in 2012’s Frances Ha. Maybe it’s because Baumbach is gaining maturity not merely as a filmmaker, but also as a person; it can’t be accidental that he’s the same age as his protagonists in While We’re Young, definitely his kindest — and therefore more approachable — film to date.

We meet Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) as they nervously try to interact with a newborn: not theirs, as we quickly discover, but the first child of best friends Fletcher and Marina (Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia). As displayed so expressively by Watts — Cornelia tries, but doesn’t quite succeed, to hide her agitation — this moment is a crisis, and not merely because it revives painful memories of their own failed attempts to have children.

No, it’s a crossroads. Just as marriage leaves still-single friends feeling isolated, new parents with kids instantaneously join yet another social clique that simply doesn’t allow for childless members ... no matter how polite the lip-service.

Just like that, Josh and Cornelia feel left out.