coming of age Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Girls on Film: Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy », Columns », Girls on Film »
They start as young cherubs, their round faces full of smiles and innocence. They play, and delve into anything cute and sweet. A few years pass and the Barbies are given up for boys. Life is still childlike, even with the first hints of attraction. But the good gets tired, and in a blink, it's given up for stripper poles, prostitution, degradation, and a feverish desperation to be seen as an adult -- mentally and physically.Yes, the above path is a bit exaggerated. Young actresses often mix a little thrilling fare in with the sweetness. Nevertheless, there is almost always a swift and destructive crashing of the gate between adolescence and adulthood. One minute, the young actress is all song, dance, and smiling love, and the next, they're fighting for their own spot in the world of Mr. Skin.
We can't exactly blame them. We live in a world rife with contradictions about growing up and being taken seriously. The world of The Breakfast Club and slightly tougher teen fare was replaced with tween limbo and an elongation of sweet teen life. But at the same time, we chide those that take part in Disney's tween world, publish countdown clocks marking the days left until some young actress is legal, and as much as we might complain about them stripping for cred, our complaints fade if the project turns out to be good.
But what does it mean for actresses now and tomorrow? The path is murky.
Tribeca Review: Driving Lessons
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Tribeca », Theatrical Reviews », Harry Potter »
Aside from its dialects and locations being distinctively English and Scottish, Driving Lessons feels very American. The coming-of-age film, which stars a stone-faced Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films), has a story that seems straight off the assembly line of our own indie scene. Some of the conventions used in the script include the out-of-his-league crush, the casual virginity-loss, the overbearing and/or religious parent, the life-changing road-trip, and the cross-generational relationship that begins as student-mentor and ends as everlasting friendship. Such tried-and-true elements are not specific to the States, but with so many novice filmmakers here relying on generic adolescence as their easy starting point, the conventions have become staples of American cinema.
Grint plays Ben, a boy so far on the verge of manhood that he states his age as precisely 17½. He's not very ready for the world, though, thanks to his strict, protective mother (Laura Linney) and his weak father (Nicholas Farrell). When urged to get a summer job, Ben finds employment as an assistant for an aging actress named Dame Evie Walton (Julie Walters, who plays Grint's mom in the Harry Potter films), who not only helps him to grow up, but also helps him to have fun with the transition into adulthood, as well.
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