Last night, my housemate and I sat in front of the TV with just one request, the sort of request that covers many a film in hindsight yet can never seem to be fulfilled on demand: we wanted to watch a good film. It didn’t have to be brilliant, nor Oscar-worthy (if you want to know which films from this year’s Oscars are actually worth seeing, suss my other article out here: ), we just wanted to put our feet up in front of the telly without having to get up after ten minutes because our choice of movie proved too painful to continue. Look, it’s a low bar. All we wanted was to be, at the very least, entertained.
And, dear reader, I hate to disappoint. But disappoint is exactly what our selection of movie insisted on doing. My First Summer, an Australian coming-of-age film written and directed by Katie Found, possessed what so much of the Australian content that litters our screens possesses: potential. But potential remains only just that when it is yet it be fulfilled, like a shrivelled-up limp rubber balloon skin, no one applauds it for what they imagine it could be.
Claudia and Grace meet each other under dire circumstances after Grace discovers Claudia thrashing about in the reservoir, unable to follow the directions that her mother took to leave the wretched world behind. Almost immediately, Grace and Claudia radiate obvious chemistry. The film feels a little unsure if this chemistry should remain platonic or be full-blown romantic, and this uncertainty of tension reflects in the very awkward and verycliched script. And in some moments, some of the more touching, genuine reflections of teenage hood in the story, it’s the acting that fails to translate these more subtle interactions. Either not enough or too much, the balance of emotion felt always at one end of the seesaw.
Claudia, who has spent her whole life isolated from the world that lies beyond her mother’s farm, acts like a 12-year-old child, whilst Grace on the other hand, Claudia’s new-found friend from down the creek, looks like a 22-year-old woman, yet both are meant to be 16. That goes with saying that both actors did do an incredible job. The newest rising stars on the Australian film scene, Markella Kavenagh (Claudia) and Maiah Stewardson (Grace) hit the nail on the head for their work as angsty, lost Aussie teen girls. It’s somewhere in between their acting as these characters and these characters translating to the screen that something is lost. And if I had to put my finger on it, that thing might be authenticity.
Other than the excessive lathering of cheese to produce a fine cliché of a film, the film looked wonderful. From the opening shot right to the closing, the film visually scored an eleven outta ten. My mouth fell agape from those first burnt orange-hued, rustic and raw shots that danced with the light and caught the Australian landscape from all the right angles. Shocked, I was, that such a flimsy story could almost, almost, be excusable by looking so visually fucking fantastic.
But how something looks can only carry it so far, and in this case the visuals couldn’t heave the content over the line that only few Australian films make over. On one side, an array of violently cringeworthy films that can always be guaranteed to never be granted a second watch. On the other side are films that are merely good.What can I say, the bar is low.
We didn’t turn off My First Summer. Maybe because of my undying optimism that there truly are some amazing Aussie films out there, and at least some of these are direct descendants of the coming-of-age genre. Or maybe because we couldn’t really be bothered trying to find something else to watch. My First Summer was fine, we were moderately entertained, the acting was tolerable, the visuals incredible. But perhaps this doesn’t suffice the criteria to be entertained. You decide, I guess.
My First Summer by Katie Found: 2.5/5
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