Directed by: Bradley Rust Gray
Starring: Juno Temple and Riley Keough
Plot: After a chance meeting, 2 girls start a summertime love affair.
Review:
This has been sold as a werewolf movie which is definitely misleading.
Diane (Juno Temple) is a British born and raised teenager living in New York with her aunt. She has a twin sister back in England. Diane was expecting her sister to show up on a bus, but when she doesn’t show, Diane has to track down a phone. This leads her into the nearest hipster shop (I think it was music store), where she meets Jack. Jack (Riley Keough) is a tomboy who shows interest in Diane at first sight. She falls over herself trying to help Diane to somehow win her affection, which eventually works. The two of them strike up a relationship that lasts all summer with its air share of ups and downs.
Temple and Keough in the leads have great screen presence. They really capture the magnetic attraction of young love, but as the screenplay pushes this first love into enduring love territory, it does very little to earn it. The characters are terribly under developed. They are very eccentric. As the why they are eccentric are revealed to us, the how isn’t. The characters rely completely on Temple and Keough being likable in a raw, first-impression way. Their first meets are characterized by nervous banter and awkward behavior. It is cute at first, but they never seem to get very comfortable with each other. As the summer ends, and the threat of one of them leaving becomes imminent, their pre-separation anxiety is just annoying.
Riley and Kylie kissing is nice, but this question would be better with Juno’s adorableness.
Their awkward moments are interrupted by these weird stop motion episodes. They feature what looks like internal organs with braided hair slithering through them. From what I could gather, it was meant to show how this sexual awakening in Diane is changing her. It is kind of a “take a walk on the wild side” kind of approach. This is where any semblance of a werewolf movie comes in. Every time Diane seems to get close to Jack sexually, we get a wolf like creature. And not like a wolf-humanoid but a twisted wolf tumor thing. It was weird. The worst was, in the context of the film, it didn’t exist. It was a visual cue. So even though they could have made a werewolf thriller that was about sexual awakening, they decided to make a lesbian melodrama with 3 quick instances of lycanism that they decided to hang their hat on. These scenes are never explained or expanded on. They are simply extra scenes, and I need to call bullshit.
Jack and Diane had two very charming leads, but they didn’t give them nearly enough to work with. They had a nice idea conceptually that they end up just flushing down the toilet.
Rating: 2/10
