Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.
The take
Kristen Stewart stars as Melinda, a girl entering the gauntlet of freshman year in high school who is also carrying a heavy secret: after suffering an assault over the summer at a party, she has become determined to speak as little as possible. Melinda’s subjective experience is presented without mediation, melodrama nor moralism, but rather as life through her eyes: teachers are puff-chested bullies; parents are mumbling, ephemeral strangers; whispering girls are talking about her, all the time. It is a realistic portrait of the inner life and experience of a young woman whose sudden introversion, academic decline, and loss of social connections appear to go completely unnoticed, while she struggles to process and unburden herself of the weight of trauma. It’s an empathetic story well-served by Stewart’s understated performance and the film’s quiet pace.
Comments
UP NEXT
UP NEXT
UP NEXT
More like this in
How to Have Sex (2023)
A drunken summer vacation turns melancholy in this sober observation of teenage rites of passage
7.7
Betty Blue (1986)
Artistic frustration is only temporarily sated by love in this erotic, supposedly psychological, drama
6.5
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
A star-studded and riveting legal drama with a blockbuster feel.
8.1
The Guilty (2018)
A minimalist, razor-sharp thriller that will have you gasping for air.
9.0
Forgotten Love (2023)
The stunning third take of the classic Polish pre-war melodrama
7.7
The Beautiful Game (2024)
A heartwarming lesson in belonging and humility following the sports movie formula
7.0
Falling in Love Like in Movies (2023)
A contemplative Indonesian romance film that rewrites and re-examines the genre’s conventions
8.4
Bray Wyatt: Becoming Immortal (2024)
WWE’s best effort to pay tribute to Windham “Bray Wyatt” Rotunda
8.5
System Crasher (2019)
A tale of trauma and one of the most talked about movies on Netflix in 2020.
9.0
River (2023)
A delightful and ultimately life-affirming Japanese time loop comedy clearly made with love