AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR THE MOVING IMAGE: In his offbeat 2008 VHS cassette comedy Be Kind Rewind director Michel Gondry created the fictional process 'sweding", where amateurs remake a known film cheaply with available resources: the car in Driving Miss Daisy was a couple of chairs, the gear in Ghostbusters was positively cardboard. With his new low-budget effort, The We and the I, the irrepressible Gondry has found a more authentic version of the process, by creating an original work from the workshopped input of teenagers at a New York City community centre. Forget sweding, this is Bronxing.
There are too many storylines juggled through the 90 minute ride.
Set on what turns out to be a very long bus ride home from the final day of school, Gondry’s challenging picture captures the teenagers playing the parts they outlined, and the work has the energy and the sudden changes of content that you might expect from a generation raised with video on demand and YouTube. With Young MC’s propulsive 'Bust a Move" as the first burst of vintage hip-hop on the soundtrack, the mainly working-class African-American and Hispanic teens pile onto the bus in a blue of backpacks and bad language; it’s 20 years and a long way from Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused.
The tone is unadorned and the shooting style handheld but intimate, due to the confines of the bus. Gondry lets the initial exuberance, which can be both silly and cruel (sometimes simultaneously), confront you to see if you’ll react any better than some of the adults on the bus. The performances are naturalistic obviously, with dialogue often excitedly rushed through, but there are staples of the teen comedies that Gondry and his adolescent cohorts are trying to create an alternative to: girls mock boys who pursue them, a group of bullies at the back of the bus periodically sally forth to create havoc, most notably smashing a guitar, while infatuated couples of all sexual orientations, make out.
There are too many storylines juggled through the 90 minute ride – there’s a slight delay for a car crash and a pizza purchase – but figures gradually emerge from the noise and bravado. Michael (Michael Brodie) sits in the back but has a sensitive side, while Teresa (Teresa Lynn), who has been absent for several weeks following a contentious party, is trying to get through to him while fending off his imbecilic cohorts. Laidychen (Laidychen Carrasco) is trying to organise her Sweet Sixteen party and find a boyfriend for her best friend (Meghan Murphy), while growing stressed to the point of maniacal self-scratching.
There are several powerful moments, one captured in an improvisation that had to have odd plot points inserted so that it vaguely made sense, and the roughness reveals a youthful energy that keeps you hopping from seat to seat as games come and go and the insults give way to small victories. 'See a movie with you? I’d feel sick," howls one girl at a doleful suitor, but when they get off the bus she slips him her phone number. Bad news, communicated like so much in the movie by mobile phone, also arrives, and as the numbers dwindle the final conversations stretch somewhat for emotional resonance and a surprisingly conventional ending. Obviously there’s a little bit of The Breakfast Club in every cinematic teen encounter.
