Teen Spirit

Isle of Wight Girl problems

Originally printed in Compass, APRIL 24, 2019.

Have you ever been on a date with someone who likes all the same things you like, understands your references and remembers the songs you used to dance alone to — but there’s no spark?

That’s how I feel about Max Minghella, the 33 year old son of the late Academy Award winning director Anthony Minghella (whose repertoire includes some of my all-time favorites like “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “The English Patient.”) Going to see Max’s directorial debut, “Teen Spirit,” was a bit like a first date. 

We’re going to have to be just friends.

To get it out of the way, no potential Nirvana biopics were harmed in the making of this Elle Fanning vehicle. “Teen Spirit” has nothing to do with the 1990s Seattle grunge scene. It’s far more spiritually in line with the glittery pink deodorant to which Kurt Cobain’s song title made reference.

On the Isle of Wight in England, Violet (Fanning) is just a steel town worker on a Saturday night… well, no. She’s the working-class daughter of a single Polish mom, sweating out shifts as a waitress, doing chores around their farm-country cottage and scraping up extra cash singing pop covers to a smattering of senior citizen barflies. One barfly in the audience is Vlad (Zlatko Buric), a once famous opera singer now living on drinks and sleeping in his van. He takes Violet under his wing as she enters the televised U.K. talent competition, Teen Spirit. Can two down-on-their-luck nobodies form an unlikely pairing and make it to the top? Well, yeah. Probably. 

It is a movie — and one unafraid to telegraph what sat on Minghella’s DVD shelf as he penned his script. A scene where Violet prepares for her audition includes the opening melody of “What A Feeling” by Irene Cara.

The most glaring clue comes at an unexpected place in the opening credits: producer Jamie Bell. Yes, the English actor who made his screen debut as Billy Elliot. It’s a comparison that does Violet no favors. What did Bell’s own film about a kid who uses the performing arts to get out of a small town have that “Teen Spirit” doesn’t? A beating heart, for one. 

“Teen Spirit” just doesn’t have much to say about being a poor girl in a singing competition. Violet and Vlad’s relationship never recovers, or really moves beyond, the initial creepiness of a scraggly, physically imposing old man complimenting a teenage girl on her performance. The pair make even less sense when their mentorship is threatened by a golden ticket offer from the Simon Cowell-like record producer played by Rebecca Hall. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to keep the establishment as a male presence, and have Violet’s downtrodden opera coach be an aging diva? Wouldn’t that say more about how the industry scoops up young women and then discards them when that youth has been leeched out? 

I started this review by saying I like a lot of the same things as Minghella, and I do. I like Elle Fanning and her eclectic resume of arthouse flicks. I like that “Teen Spirit” is so unabashedly feminine. I like that Minghella hired cinematographer Autumn Durald, because she’s cool and does cool work, with hazy light and dreamy naturalism softening Gia Coppola’s bitter “Palo Alto.” Here, her style tricks are amped up to eleven, backlighting the actors and flaring out every tiny lightbulb into a disco ball. It’s as unnaturally slick as a music video, but it makes sense in a film about pop music.

Pop, not character, I think is the film’s driving force. “Teen Spirit” is a defense of the sophisticated but unpretentious tracks of early 2010s electro-girls: Robyn, Ellie Goulding, Grimes, Tegan and Sara. The songs are unsubtle and repetitive, produced within an inch of their life to get your toes tapping. But pop is equally the story of the listener. It’s the misfit middle schooler in her bedroom. It’s the betrayed prom date salvaging the night. It’s the tired woman after work, trying to forget. It’s joy that masks pain. It’s following the bravery and loneliness of Robyn’s call to action, as heard in the lyrics Violet sings for her audition: “I just keep dancing on my own.”

Elle Fanning’s cover isn’t bad. Her voice is unfussy and deeper than expected. It’s pretty and it’s young. It’s nice to be pretty and young. But to see the beauty in the struggle, to earn real triumph, you have to be willing to get ugly.