Sexistentialism and the single girl
Edgy story goes beyond titillation to explore a teen’s desires
Marialy Rivas makes a bold entrance with her sexy coming-of-age tale Joven y alocada (Young and Wild). The Chilean director’s first film recently won Sundance’s World Cinema Screenwriting Award, which she shared with co-writers Camila Gutiérrez, Pedro Peirano and Sebastián Sepúlveda.
Gutiérrez authored the raunchy blog that inspired the movie, and Peirano was co-writer of the excellent 2010 Chilean drama The Maid. All help to give this edgy, entertaining film a perfect balance of wit, resonance and authenticity.
It’s the story of 17-year-old Daniela (Alicia Rodríguez), a seemingly reserved girl from an evangelical family typical of Chile’s religious conservatism. Daniela has one problem: like the protagonist of Spike Lee’s breakthrough 1986 comedy She’s Gotta Have It, she loves sex.
And she loves to kiss and tell, documenting her exploits and moral reservations in her blog. These sequences are snappily edited, with a range of colourful characters shown reacting to her stories, and offering anecdotes of their own.
Daniela gets in trouble when the principal at her religious high school finds out that she has been living in sin, i.e. having sex with a boy on school property; she is expelled on the spot. As punishment, her super-strict mom sends her to work at an evangelical TV station – a lighter sentence than initially anticipated, negoti- ated with help from the girl’s cool, terminally ill aunt.
But far from putting an end to Daniela’s escapades, her new job merely provides the setting for more trouble. She meets Antonia (María Gracia Omegna), a rebellious, blond bombshell with whom she immediately hits it off; and finds a respectable boyfriend in Tomás (Felipe Pinto).
Tomás is a nice guy, but a bit of a prude – a situation that Daniela makes it her mission to rectify. Meanwhile, sexual tension comes to a boil with Antonia. Stuck in the middle of an increasingly fraught love triangle, Daniela must make a choice.
She must also do some internal questioning about what sex means to her and what she wants out of life. The film impresses in this respect, getting beyond titillation and funky esthetics to communicate something real at the same time. We sense in Daniela not just an overactive sex drive, but the frustration of a young person trying to enter the real world on her own terms.
Rodriguez is excellent in the lead role, conveying both a seriousness and devil-maycare attitude that perfectly encapsulate the contradictions at hand. She spites her repressive upbringing to claim her sexual liberation, and yet that doesn’t mean she has the world all figured out.
At once provocative and thought-provoking, Joven y alocada presses all the right buttons. Joven y alocada (Young and Wild)
μμμμ Starring: Alicia Rodríguez, María Gracia Omegna, Felipe Pinto, Aline Kuppeinheim Playing in Spanish with English subtitles at Cinéma
du Parc Parents’ guide: language,
nudity, sex.