The Cube
in Bristol, a tuck-away microplex located in Stokes Croft, played
host to a screening of the crowd-funded documentary Beyond Clueless
last Friday. I went along to attend the showing, which was followed
up with a Q&A with director Charlie Lyne.
Beyond
Clueless focusses on teen movies of the 1995-2004 period, starting
with Clueless and graduating with Mean Girls. The doc is written up
as a film essay, analysing the conventions, paradigms and themes of
the teen movie clique, but most imperatively, it illustrates Lyne's
enduring high school crush on said genre. Talking heads are exempt
from this homage, with a more unorthodox knitting together of scenes,
which manufactures into a layered quilt of clips from 250 or so
movies. Fairuza Balk, star of The Craft, the subject of the prologue,
narrates us through Lyne's script. She conveys through her bewitching
tone that the mid-to-late 90's and early-to-mid 2000's engineered a,
albeit cliché heavy, teen movie rebellion. Everything on show, from
conformity to control to cold-blooded murder, is theorized and
scrutinized by Lyne. However, when clips from critically panned
movies such as The Rage: Carrie 2 and Josie and The Pussycats turn up
to class, it does become difficult to be a constantly earnest student
of Lyne's analysis. Having said this, many of his points are both
interesting and valid, including his comments on the shifting plates
of social hierarchy, present in She's All That and Slap Her, She's
French, as well as his observation of the pitfalls of strict parental
repression, encapsulated by Bubble Boy. Lyne's expose is nowhere near
as tenuous as some of the movies he is exposing, and in being
open-minded, I found myself conforming to many of his thoughtfully
researched suggestions.
Let us
briefly cease the analytical chewing and mark presentation. A
dizzying, spell-binding soundtrack by pop duo Summer Camp clicks
instantaneously with the subject matter, and powerfully accelerates
the film's running time around the track. Doodles drawn by Hattie
Stewart act as a whimsical aesthetic, covering Beyond Clueless in
graffiti throughout and gratifying Lyne's own teenage nostalgia.
Fairuza Baulk narrates with conviction, although once or twice an
uncertain intonation creeps in, like when describing Euro Trip's
homoerotic subtext, as if she is unsure of its own credibility.
Reverting back to the director, his amalgamation of teen movie
tragedy with teen movie comedy is very insightful, as it shows us the
similarities in imposed character traits. For instance, Elephant, set
in the day of a high school shooting, and concentrically a severe
rebuke of the lackadaisical gun laws in America, involves body
conscious teens, nerds and jocks. This same layout of characters
exist in American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You. This may well
be Lyne's criticism of the pseudo-reality structure of these films,
which procreates stereotypes from preceding teen movie incarnations.
Or then again perhaps it's not a criticism. You see, this is no burn
book. Lyne is clearly enamoured with the genre, being respectful of
the good and the bad of it, and being mindful of the fact that the
good is most definitely outweighed by the bad. He is glorifying a lot
of terrible teen movies, and I like so totally don't care.
The Q&A
was a revelation. Charlie Lyne, a charming and witty cinephile, is a
likeable film critic. They are sparse in number, and it was
refreshing to see someone who has reviewed for the BBC Film Programme
and his very own Ultra Culture, to swim across the channel to the
risky world of film-making, which saw him kick-start his crowd
funding campaign on Kickstarter. He was self-deprecating; on
answering a question about why he made the movie, 'nostalgia mostly,
and also I wasn't the type to go out in my teenage years
to get pissed, I lived my social life vicariously at home watching
old VHS tapes.' A confession that he was proud of, and that he should
be. In
addition, his getting hold of Fairuza Balk was a brilliant anecdote,
'Fairuza was top of our list. She owns her own candle company now,
and the only way I could contact her was through the complaints
section. Luckily she replied three minutes later and was excited by
the pitch that I gave her, and she ended up coming aboard.' A very
nifty way of getting hold of a narrator. The complaints department.
The most intriguing answer came from the question, 'why the
unconventional method without talking heads?' Lyne responded with
enthusiasm, 'it's a love-letter to the genre, embracing the mad,
overwrought aesthetic of that world'. This to me made a lot of sense
after watching Lyne's film, as at its nucleus, Beyond Clueless is a
celebration of the good, the bad and the ugly of the teen movie from
1995 to 2004. Plus, talking heads could disparage his beloved genre.
And he wouldn't want that now would he.
There are
a few, casual moments where it needs to tuck its shirt in, yet
overall, Beyond Clueless wears its uniform well.
Beyond
Clueless is released Friday 23rd January
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