Disclosures:
The following is a copy of my review on Amazon for this movie with a few additional statements added.
I will receive a small commission from Amazon for any purchases made through the buy link.
This post contains discussions of suicide.
Ornery Review:
As someone who attempted suicide in my teens, I watched this movie with interest. I was raised Catholic like the female protagonists and became rebellious as a teenager. In fairness to my parents, they were not as ridiculously strict as the parents in this film, but we had a lot of arguments.
My heart broke for Lux, the character played by Kristin Dunst. The boy she trusted abandoned her. He was hell-bent on seducing her, and then when he got what he wanted he dumped her. The same thing happened to me and it was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as pushing me to attempt suicide.
I really hated Trip for his behavior. When you have sex with someone and then your attitude is "after that it was weird and I didn't care how she got home," you don't have the right to say you loved that person again, ever. You don't treat people you love like that, period.
Lux was in a vulnerable state. She had been drinking before she and Trip had sex, and then she fell asleep. He left her lying out on the football field alone. Anyone who treats another human being like that is trash. This character really made me angry.
After Trip dumped Lux, she began behaving in a hypersexual fashion, seducing as many willing guys as possible and having sex with them on the roof of the family's house. The film's narrator and his friends watch these liaisons through a telescope, making moronic comments.
What people don't understand is that girls who behave in a hypersexual fashion are reacting to trauma of some kind. Rather than showing compassion, these girls are called unkind names and exploited by men and boys willing to take advantage of them. The other boys were not as awful as Trip but still behaved deplorably acting like the Lisbon girls were prizes to be won rather than troubled human beings who needed a friend.
Girls and women are not objects to be ogled, prizes to be won, pets to be kept, or mysteries to be solved. We are human beings. The film does a decent job of expressing the sometimes extremely painful frustration of being a teenage girl. This is a commendable goal as teenage girls are the demographic whose troubles are least likely to be taken seriously.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
Not a movie I have seen. Not a movie I am likely to see. Thanks for your review. Sadly your final paragraph is painfully true.
ReplyDeleteIt's a well-done movie, but I don't recommend it unless you are in the mood to get pissed off and hate pretty much every male on the planet for their shit entitled behavior when it comes to women and girls.
DeleteAt one point I also learned that some guys target girls with low self-esteem to practice on them. I wish the fleas of a thousand camels into the underpants of any guy who has ever done that.
I know not all men are this shitty, but altogether too many of them are.