Courtesy of Abbeygate Cinema, Deputy Editor Molly Stacey reviews the teen movie about teen movies: Charlie Lyne’s Beyond Clueless.
In the decade that passed between the plaid-clad debut of Cher Horowitz in Clueless, and the death-by-bus decimation of the Junior Plastics in the final scenes of Tina Fey’s Mean Girls, Hollywood seemed to be an infinite cache of red cups, bitchy cliques, sexual awakenings and Freddie Prinze Jr. After another 10 years of brewing, like STIs in a post-pool party hot tub, Charlie Lyne gives us Beyond Clueless, an indulgent yet astute nostalgia-fest which documents the ‘coming-of-age’ of teen cinema between 1994 and 2005.
For twenty-five year-old Lyne, pop-cultural commentary is no new task. In 2008, he founded the film blog, Ultra Culture, which went on to win Sky Movies’ Blog of the Year, and landed him a job on BBC One’s The Film. Indeed, Beyond Clueless’s tricksy editing and tongue-in-cheek narration, realised through the deadpan drawl of Fairuza Balk, is a direct evolution of the chatty cynicism that characterises Ultra Culture, and which, at its best, applies just the right levels of mockery and admiration to a genre so self-absorbed. The re-framing of crass horror, Jeepers Creepers, as a homo-erotic confessional is a comedic triumph, whilst the concise synopsis of 13 Going On 30’s ‘happy ending’ – a teenager remains eternally trapped in the body of a 30 year-old, sacrificing her career and independence and instead living out impossible childhood fantasies of marrying her high school sweetheart and living in a life-size doll’s house – provides genuine insight into the alarming morality that underpins the adolescent movie.
Yet, for all its cheekiness, the main bulk of analysis often feels forced, and lacks, ironically, the overarching sense of conclusion that teen films provide. Whilst Lyne’s sheer devotion, demonstrated in his stitching together of over 200 films, has to be applauded, his over-ambition results in commentary that ping-pongs from one point to another before it has even finished its own sentence. Add to this a plentiful number of abstract inclusions – Slap Her, She’s French anyone? – which would leave even the most cinephilic member of Generation Y baffled, and the refreshing sense of relevance (otherwise present in the inventive editing and dreamy sound-track) is lost. In fact, it is the moments when Balk’s cynical narration is silenced in favour of Summer Camp’s pleasingly saturated soundtrack, and Lyne’s cinematic show reel is allowed to take centre stage that the documentary reaches its peak levels of perception. The amorphous montage of lavish parties, cartoon violence, sexual frustration and unchallenged stereotypes reveals a common denominator amongst the much-cherished films of Lyne’s youth. What is the only thing the all-white, twenties-playing-teens casts of these movies have in common with their adolescent audience? The inescapable sense that they are playing a role, and only once they reach the sepia-toned finale that is graduation will they be allowed to go “off-script”.
In partnership with Abbeygate Cinema, Bury St Edmunds.
The Sixth Form Journal 