Like
a delicate magic trick, Only the Young
is best watched in a state of rapt fascination. An unostentatious feature debut from Elizabeth Mims and Jason Tippet, the film
chronicles a few months in the lives of three impossibly sweet teens in a desert
town. Impressively, it does so without signposting major events along the way. Instead,
we weave through their relationship and family dramas with only their
changing hairstyles as obvious chronological markers, catching everyday lyricism
in first car rides and teen girls’ catlike head nudges.
On
paper it isn’t much: lanky Garrison and skittish Kevin have been best friends
for years, and continue to be despite the impending threat of graduation and
the complication of Skye, Garrison’s on-again off-again girlfriend and Kevin’s
sublimated crush. That’s about it for narrative, though plenty comes out
incidentally in their relaxed conversations. Garrison and Skye’s courtship is
entangled, as these things tend to be, in a host of issues bigger than the
couple, including an unexpected development in her living situation and, more
importantly, his immaturity as a teen boy drawn to girls outside of his immediate
frame of reference. Taking for granted the wholesome friend next door, Garrison
briefly dates Kristen, another nice girl who Skye, in her best but still unconvincing
impression of a mean person, calls “A hip hop dancing liberal. And short.” That
all three subjects happen to be evangelical Christians is a bit startling at
first, but Mims and Tippet take their faith seriously. Garrison and Skye banter
about marriage, of all things, like reincarnated old souls; their earnestness is
something we don’t see enough of in movies about teens. That’s not to say that Only the Young goes down like medicine:
it’s above all a beautiful film, formally translating the wooziness of these
kids’ sun-kissed days into graceful footage of their bodies gliding through
abandoned skate parks like gangly Adonises. Children are the gods of this city,
as Garrison half-jokingly announces over the opening credits, but Only the Young reassures us that they’re
benevolent rulers. ***1/2/****
PROGRAMME: International Spectrum
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