Amy George (2011)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I understand that there are many adults who watched this film. Great! I am a 15 year old kid, I had the good fortune of going to the Toronto International Film Festival. And fortunately my whole experience was not entirely tainted by Amy George. Some say that Amy George reminds us of a realistic teenager's life.I don't know, who the hell the directors were, but my 13 year old highlights did not consist of what I just saw. Their lives must have been pretty boring to create this film. It is SO boring! Their film making techniques can not be excused. For god sakes people, they filmed a whole 3 minute long shot of the boy saying what he saw. Film is ALL about visuals. I didn't come to here a 13 year old boy say this: I see a tree, a rock, another rock, etc. FOR 3 FREAKIN MINUTES! It took them 30 seconds to establish that a teacher had a lot of books and was walking through a hallway... doing nothing but making sure they didn't fall. I was praying that the shot would end, but it never did.MY GOD this movie doesn't even have a plot: Boy has photography assignment, boy wastes his hippie parent's money, boy attempts to be artist, boy talks too much, boy gets F because he handed in porn to his teacher, boy masturbates in washroom. What is that? Did he develop? Did he grow? Was there even a CLIMAX?! NO! These boys (director) wasted 2 hours of my life and one ticket from tiff... I could have watched Moneyball for god sakes! I am not a mainstream fan, I love artsy movies. THIS is a sorry excuse for an artsy movie!

Another one of these introspective movies in which nothing happens and they try to save it with music. (The music track is actually quite good.) The coming-of-age set-up would be fine if there was an actual story here. There isn't. We've seen it all before - the dreamy shrimpy kid, the sexual longing, the bad girl object of his fantasies. It might have worked if there was a script. Instead we have far too many long scenes that come out of nowhere and lead nowhere, bits and pieces of story line, and gauzy shots that are presumably meant to invoke some higher plane of artistic intensity - all of which might be excusable as a pretentious but understandable excess in a film school project, but ought to have been weeded out by a major film festival that charges twenty bucks a ticket for what is supposed to be a professional effort. Is there a plus side? Yes - there are some brief moments of humor and good timing by the actors; the Amy George role is very well acted and the character carries a lot of undeveloped menace that the filmmakers could have zeroed in on to much greater advantage than following Jesse's fuzzy (and totally unoriginal) adolescent yearnings. Amy at least is interesting and a bit original.

There is something undeniably authentic about Amy George. Considering how well-worn the traditional "coming of age" tale is, and the great expanse of modern indie takes on the theme, perhaps the film's sincerity is it's most remarkable feat. You might not believe every word a character says or every event that happens, but you do believe that this is what adolescence feels like. Amy George strips away the Michael Cera/Jesse Eisenberg glamorization of awkward and instead reminds us of how it actually felt to go to a middle school dance.There is an undeniable gulf between the film's visuals and its writing; while the cinematography is approached with a mature artistry the dialogue is clunky at times and the story's structure prefers to linger rather than maintain a steady pace. Interestingly, the dissonance does not feel out of sync with the heart of the film. Jesse, the teen-aged protagonist, would seem completely out of place delivering the well-polished lines of Amy George's Hollywood-friendly equivalent. As every shot of the film displays, Jesse's Toronto is a beautiful place, but at thirteen-years-old he doesn't quite know how to express himself, let alone the beauty around him.Any of the film's flaws are easily forgivable due to how delicately connected they are to Amy George's greatest and most satisfying merits. After all, being a teenager never really felt like Juno or an episode of Glee. We said stupid things, thought we understood more than we did, and for the most part struggled through the moody atmosphere. The power of Amy George is the ability to earnestly look back at that time in our lives without the taint of nostalgia and remember, or perhaps learn for the first time, the lessons those years bring.

My brother took me to this film at a Brooklyn film festival because the soundtrack features four of his compositions. Nevertheless, about halfway through the film I found myself wondering why in the world I was sitting there watching it. The film tells the story of several days in the life of Jesse, a 13-year-old boy in Toronto. The filmmakers have nothing original to say about this well-worn topic. Several events or statements by characters feel unrealistic but not in an interesting way or for an interesting purpose. For example, numerous comments about sexual orientation and alcohol ring untrue. The biggest example is what Jesse chooses to submit as his assignment in a photography class, a choice with pointless shock value and no apparent connection to his character. The acting is uneven but the cast doesn't have much to work with, given the limitations of the script. The cinematography is beyond bad, full of pointlessly quirky shots that suggest the camera-work of a first-year film student who is just fooling around.