Good Metaphor and Fun

Rating: 8/10 (18 August 2014)

I am not a teenage girl, and it's been decades since I was a teenage boy. Nevertheless, I liked this film. When I 'was' a teenage boy I enjoyed Metamorphosis by Kafka - ignoring the implausibility of a human maintaining personal identity in a roach's body. That's how I felt watching this film: as escapist, at times silly - yet fun, metaphor. In truth, we are consigned by categories and function in our society; we are constrained by early decisions, and we do change loyalties and families with time. Those choices create moral and emotional crises. That was this movie, on an imaginative stage. Beatrice's stress at selecting a faction reminded me of "having" to pick a major, the sexual tension between her and Four, the wanting to fit in, and the re-framing of parents once out of the home are nearly universal experiences. Also nearly universal is the feeling that the World rests on your shoulders. Although that changes with the perspective of time in ordinary life, in this film the fate of the city does rest on her shoulders. That is what art does; paint scenarios that reflect inner life better than ordinary life.