by Cain Noble-Davies
Value: 20,00 €
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Pour:
Judge Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman
Introduction:
It’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, it’s calming, it’s uncompromising, it’s transcendent, it’s embarrassing; it’s just that.
I will just preface this by stating that while this review will argue that this film deserves all the praise, there are some reading this who not Enjoy this film. If “enjoy” is even the right word. We won’t suggest that those who disagree simply don’t “get it” (a fancy rephrasing of “there’s nothing wrong with it, there’s something wrong with you,” an elitist backstabbing that deserves to be removed from serious critical conversations), but this film was made from start to finish for a very specific audience. Do you know that one friend who is so obsessed with a TV show of an obscure genre that it’s a personality trait? Or maybe you are that friend?
Beginning with a pop culture moment between Owen (starting with Ian Foreman, but mostly played by Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), Jane Schoenbrun’s script and direction perfect captures the joy of finding someone to vent with, especially in the pre-Internet era. Their shared interest, the children’s anthology horror series The Pink Opaque, is a pastiche of the late ’90s genre: a bit Goose flesha little bit Are you afraid of the dark?and abundant amounts of Buffyright down to the font of the credits. It manages to sell this intense fandom oddity so well that it could well be a nostalgia-bait show on Netflix Now.
Of course, that is just the beginning. Things soon take a turn for the Lynchian as the line between reality and fiction begins to blur and the two question who they really are. Both Lundy-Paine and Smith devour every second of their screen time, with Maddy as a fiery queer-punk avatar and Owen as a cotton candy egg who is afraid if even a drop breaks his shell.
The film’s transgender themes are explicit in everything except the use of the word itself, and Schoenbrun builds on her lineage in dissociation to create incredibly unsettling out-of-body experiences throughout. The entire film could be described as an extended session of staring at yourself from above your own head. The portrayal of this level of dysphoria is immensely powerful, already elevating it to the upper echelons of A24’s output to date…but the way it’s explored through engagement with fiction makes it resonate outside of that specific experience as well.
The fear that the things we like to remember, that shaped us in our youth (and in a broader sense Despite it define) may not be as we remember them… but they are important nonetheless. Creating analogue safe spaces for abnormals to explore their abnormality, to recognise hidden parts of themselves in people that lie beyond what can rationally exist on our side of the screen, and to become their true selves by embracing it. It crystallises why fiction as an aspect of who we are as human beings, vitaland why the right film at the right time can mean everything to the right person.
I saw the TV light updespite everything that has already been written here and elsewhere, is beyond words. Jane Schoenbrun has created a foundational work of queer cinema by using her already flawless understanding of horror fandom (the Slender Man documentary to end all Slender Man documentaries) A self-induced hallucination) and the frightening release one feels by escaping the confines of the body (the quarantine core). We all go to the World Exhibition), and applying it not just to the trans experience, but to genre hyperfixation of all stripes. It’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, it’s reassuring, it’s uncompromising, it’s transcendent, it’s embarrassing; it’s just that.
