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I wish I saw YOUTH IN REVOLT (2009) when I was 16, but maybe it would have made me a prick

Posted by Daniel Metz

Dir. Miguel Artera
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz, 12/13/10, 5:30pm

I really did like this comedy starring Michael Cera as a nebbish who gets in touch with his French side by blowing stuff up and making sweet love. I think that the French aren’t given the credit they deserve.

The film’s obvious predecessor is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. That film, about a group of young members of the UHB (Urban haute-bourgeoisie) at home for winter break is perhaps the greatest film about young people trying desperately to be intellectuals and failing as only youth can fail. I’d like to take a second to point out that I spelled bourgeoisie without using the spell checker; call me lucky, or call me a member of the bourgeoisie. Metropolitan is the far greater film, but Youth in Revolt has its charms too.

Here, Cera and his little lady, played by the devilish girl next door Portia Doubleday, talk about Ozu and Jean-Paul (Belmondo, femmes et hommes) while maintaining a proper level of pretentiousness, non-knowing what you’re talking aboutness, and general maladjustedness. But that’s fine. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.

Stephen will, hopefully, write about this film a bit more than I. I do like it and could probably say more, but instead I want to devote the rest of this review to a discussion of one of the supporting characters.

First of all, the supporting cast was great: Fred Willard delivered another great performance as a perpetually shirtless ex-hippie; Justin Long gave the performance of his life as the mad brother of the love interest who drugs his family (played excellently by the much beloved Mary Kay Place of “Big Love” and character actor M. Emmet Walsh); Zack Galifianakis is not used to his fullest potential although his presence is appreciated and his unashamed sexual maneuvers are great; the young Indian Adhir Kalyan gave his best performance to date as the aggressive twerp with a charming British accent; shamefully, Steve Buscemi phoned in his role here, but I won’t hold that against the film. I would like to point out the wise words of New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane this week, who wrote, “There should be a law against wasting Steve Buscemi.”

All of these actors aside, I want to talk about a very minor role. When Doubleday goes off to a French boarding school, she inherits a free-spirited roommate who is simply identified as Taggarty. Taggarty’s number of sexual partners is heading toward the high double-digits, and she keeps wallet size pictures of them, graded by effectiveness, on her wall.

Taggarty is played by newcomer Rooney Mara. She stars in a movie titled Tanner Hall, which went straight from Toronto this year to the Hampton Film Festival and doesn’t have any promising future. In Youth in Revolt, Mara’s Taggarty is electric. Her striking charm and looks are overwhelming for the narrative, forcing Doubleday’s humble appeal into a strange place of meaninglessness. Mara’s big scene involves a slow walk after emerging from the dormitory bathroom. She is wearing the thinnest black bra and panties ever worn in an all-girls dormitory. Sex is dripping off this girl like the sweat dripping off both Kalyan and Cera’s brows upon seeing such paradise on earth.

She climbs, slowly, the ladder to her top bunk and lies on her bed, ever so suggestively, as her evening’s date sets himself up in a sleeping bag on the floor. And then she stares. What a stare from her beautiful brown eyes, her hair whispering to her ears while her body works on overdrive. This is the stare of a real sophisticate, the ideal free thinking, sexed-up egoist that this film actually aspires to pantomime.

So, Mara shines as the beacon of beauty and maturity in this film in undergarments that will make you pop out of your seat. And all I can think of now is what will happen next to this up and comer. She clearly has the looks and the talent to be a film star. But will she?

Her next film is Friends (With Benefits), a title that was unfortunately inevitable. The role seems to be small, and it is directed by auteur Gorman Bechard who brought us the classic Psychos in Love about a strip-club owner and a manicurist who get together over their shared interest in serial killing. After that on her slate is the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street where she stars opposite Kyle Gallner. How the hell is Gallner getting work by the way? He is an uncharismatic schlub who honestly looks like he is inbred. I believe him on “Big Love” because he is the son of weirdo polygamists, but I simply don’t understand why anyone would cast him. Maybe he gives good head. Anyway, I’m getting distracted.

So, is Mara going to be relegated to the annals of bad, youth-oriented genre cinema? And is this necessary bad? What these two films promise is that Mara is going to appear topless. Should we be considered lucky because we have the chance to see such beauty unadorned? Is the remote nude scene more valuable than a career of twelfth billings in B movies like Youth in Revolt and a series of appearances in TV shows like “Nip/Tuck” and “ER?” At least in A Nightmare on Elm Street a lot of us will get to see an image of beauty so stark that we could never even dream of it in real life.

On the other hand, the topless scene in that slasher film is surely going to be cheap, poorly lit, and with a bad alternative rock song behind it.

There is a small hope, however. Mara is the sixth name on that infamous Facebook movie by David Fincher, The Social Network. The film, led by the great young actor Jesse Eisenberg and the rising Rashida Jones, could be promising. Working for auteurs like Fincher can do wonders for a career. Just look at Helena Bonham Carter. Her nude scenes in Fincher’s Fight Club really made her a star.

Rooney Mara, I’m rooting for you. If you do nude scenes, may they be tastefully auterist and not generically tawdry. Or did I get that backwards?