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“Betty Finn was a true friend and I sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke-heads” laments Veronica Sawyer to her diary in Heathers (1988), the ultimate film about frenemies and funerals. In a nutshell, this film could be called Meaner Girls. Winona Ryder was born to play the sardonic, eye-rolling insider who’s secretly an outsider. With her partner in crime, the brooding and somewhat psychotic J.D. (played by Christian Slater who, let’s face it, was a total fox back then), she begins killing her idolised classmates and faking their suicides, for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. As she notes, “My teen angst bullshit has a body count”; not only is this one of the most quotable movies ever, it is a hilariously scathing depiction of adolescent love and the brutality of the high school experience. There are many imitations, such as Jawbreaker (1999), but few come close to its brilliance.
It’s tempting to say that the genre of angsty teen movies is over-saturated. There are the awesome, the awful, the “so bad it’s almost good” and of course, the “so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again”. Ghost World (2001) is unarguably in the awesome category. Based on Daniel Clowes’ iconic comic book, it charts the mundanities and isolation of suburban teenagedom, with Thora Birch (as Enid Coleslaw - coolest name ever) and Scarlett Johansson doing their best smartass ‘yoof’ impressions. Key moments include the opening sequence of Bollywood bedroom dancing, Enid being fired from the cinema’s concession counter after one day, and dyeing her hair green: “It’s not like I’m a modern punk, it’s obviously a 1977 original punk-rock look”. For greater mystery and melancholy, The Virgin Suicides (1999) takes some beating. Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut is now a fully-fledged tumblr cliché thanks to a soft-focus style and the Lisbon sisters’ ability to look incredible in floor-length vintage nighties. It’s coming-of-age without coming on too strong; haunting and voyeuristic, yet darkly humorous. No other film shows just how much a girl’s bedroom can be the centre of her universe. You know when your parents say that your teenage years are the best of your life? Suggest they watch this film and they might remember how claustrophobic and powerless it feels to be young. Every teenage girl wishes she were a witch at some point; films like The Craft (1999) explore this collective dream and inspired girls to ‘go goth’ in the nineties, adopting uniforms of doc martens, black crop tops, and way too much eyeliner. Magical powers are a tempting thought for dealing with life’s sometimes overwhelming problems, but of course, they end up ostracising the coven from their school peers even further. As Nancy says, “We are the weirdos, Mister”. Newer news items:
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