Marielle Heller, VS 2015
Language: English – subtitles: Dutch
Like most teenage girls, Minnie is longing for love, acceptance and a sense of purpose in the world. She begins a complex love affair with her mother's boyfriend.
The story unfolds in a post-hippy mid-70s San Francisco. It was a time when repertory screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show drew crowds of crossdressing kids every weekend, the gay scene around Castro Street was flourishing, and few adults thought sex with underage teenagers counted as pedophilia. Minnie’s self-absorbed, bohemian mother Charlotte positively encourages her kid to flaunt her body and party with the grownups, but prickles with jealousy when Minnie starts drawing men’s attention away from her.
Desperate for affection and irrepressibly curious about sex, Minnie willingly loses her virginity to Monroe, Charlotte’s 35-year-old boyfriend, but their subsequent affair destabilizes Minnie emotionally. Soon, she’s hooking up with kids her own age (both boys and girls), necking drugs and getting advice from the animated spirit of comic-book creator Aline Kominsky.
The story is morally complex and sometimes uncomfortable, but also lushly bawdy and funny, and packaged together with an astonishing degree of cinematic brio by first-time writer-director Marielle Heller.
Students 3,50 euro, others 7,50 euro