In short: Booksmart (2019)

I’m often making fun of actors turning directors, but that’s more on account of the Tom Cruises and Edward Nortons of this world who hijack other peoples’ films to stroke their own egos, notwithstanding the limits of their own talents, than those actresses and actors who come upon their direction work because they actually care about the art of filmmaking.

Olivia Wilde’s tale of the adventures of teens Amy (Kaitlin Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) on the last night before their high school graduation, who try to for once have a traditionally teenage fun time instead of being the teacher’s pet kind of nerd who only thinks about school, certainly suggests an actress who cares and understands said art. At first, the film seems to be a well-made and a bit lightweight but very likeable and genuinely funny coming of age comedy with a tendency to make fun little digressions into weird directions (Molly’s and Amy’s drug fantasy has to be seen to be believed), but the longer the film goes on, the clearer it becomes that Wilde is also portraying the easiness of emotional shifts and shifts in perspective common in people of our heroines’ ages, so there are moments of quiet tragedy and genuine hurt, of awkwardness and sudden insight when every character who starts out as a classic teen movie type turns out to have another facet and a different side. Wilde portrays these shifts and the opening of her characters to the complexity of other human beings as well as the downsides of their own friendship with sympathy and insight, particularly in the film’s more painful sequences, pretending the film’s a nicely flowing series of episodes when it is actually very thoughtfully structured. There’s some rather more obvious great filmmaking on display too, like the way the scene in which Amy gets her heart broken starts from a feeling of utter contentment and wonder and just flows away from there.


The whole thing is also beautifully played by Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, who pull off all of the film’s tonal shifts with ease, keeping likeable and understandable (which is something better than merely being relatable), and working through the humour, the hurt and the weirdness.