Overall I enjoyed this movie, despite the fact the story ends abruptly without a conclusion of any kind. The writer/director creates authenticity by playing the main character as a version of herself; her mom and sister play the main character's mom and sister, and it's filmed in their apartment. It's more than a self-indulgent exercise; minor characters are interesting (notably "Charlotte") and it's well written. In addition, the writer/director/lead actress shows guts by wearing no makeup in many scenes and showing herself getting dressed and showering despite being quite out of shape. There is no self-consciousness of any kind in these scenes. It is a kind of feminism.
But the real reason I found this film fascinating is how it shows what's changed between my generation (late Baby Boomer) and Generation Y: "Aura," the main character, comes home from college to live with her mom and unlike the youth of my generation, has no problem with living at home. She crawls into bed with her mother when she's feeling down. This isn't an issue because her mom is single; in fact, there's no mention of a father of any kind in the entire film. No one from my generation wanted to live with their parents after college and we did not sleep in our parents' beds past the age of 8, partly because there were usually two of them, including one of the opposite sex. Aura senses that underneath her successful exterior, her mother is lonely. It's unclear who is more needy, Aura or her mother. I came away from this film convinced that the sea change of the past 25 years has been the epidemic of divorce.
"Aura" pursues two men, unaware that neither of them are interested in her and both are loathsome--one has grandiose ideas about a non-existent career while mooching off of friends; another is an underachieving liar and cheat. Perhaps it's Aura's low self-esteem, or maybe her unfamiliarity with men from not having had a father or brother, that makes her unable to see these men as they really are. Perhaps she also can't see that being overweight and having low self-esteem might be barriers to finding the right man.
In one scene, Aura's younger sister has a party and Aura freaks out, afraid she'll be blamed for allowing minors to drink in their apartment. In my generation the 22-year-old would never have assumed this responsibility because high school students were not considered children who needed to be baby-sat. High schoolers in the 1970s and 80s didn't refer to themselves as "kids," as Aura's family does; this term was used to describe 8-year-olds; high school students called each other "people." Aura's mother complains Aura's friend Charlotte is "unsupervised" despite being a 22-year-old adult.
In short this is a perhaps inadvertently devastating portrait of current teens and young adults: Overly close with their often single moms, seeing themselves as being like children, lacking self-consciousness but also lacking self-esteem. The young men have difficulty with commitment and with respect for women (again, probably because of the divorce epidemic but perhaps also because of widespread porn--references to which are made several times in the film) and the young women bond with each other while feeling confused about how to approach the increasingly disinterested and disrespectful men whom they meet. I observe these phenomena or hear about them all the time in my professional practice and seeing a dramatic representation on an intimate scale in this film was quite fascinating.
But the real reason I found this film fascinating is how it shows what's changed between my generation (late Baby Boomer) and Generation Y: "Aura," the main character, comes home from college to live with her mom and unlike the youth of my generation, has no problem with living at home. She crawls into bed with her mother when she's feeling down. This isn't an issue because her mom is single; in fact, there's no mention of a father of any kind in the entire film. No one from my generation wanted to live with their parents after college and we did not sleep in our parents' beds past the age of 8, partly because there were usually two of them, including one of the opposite sex. Aura senses that underneath her successful exterior, her mother is lonely. It's unclear who is more needy, Aura or her mother. I came away from this film convinced that the sea change of the past 25 years has been the epidemic of divorce.
"Aura" pursues two men, unaware that neither of them are interested in her and both are loathsome--one has grandiose ideas about a non-existent career while mooching off of friends; another is an underachieving liar and cheat. Perhaps it's Aura's low self-esteem, or maybe her unfamiliarity with men from not having had a father or brother, that makes her unable to see these men as they really are. Perhaps she also can't see that being overweight and having low self-esteem might be barriers to finding the right man.
In one scene, Aura's younger sister has a party and Aura freaks out, afraid she'll be blamed for allowing minors to drink in their apartment. In my generation the 22-year-old would never have assumed this responsibility because high school students were not considered children who needed to be baby-sat. High schoolers in the 1970s and 80s didn't refer to themselves as "kids," as Aura's family does; this term was used to describe 8-year-olds; high school students called each other "people." Aura's mother complains Aura's friend Charlotte is "unsupervised" despite being a 22-year-old adult.
In short this is a perhaps inadvertently devastating portrait of current teens and young adults: Overly close with their often single moms, seeing themselves as being like children, lacking self-consciousness but also lacking self-esteem. The young men have difficulty with commitment and with respect for women (again, probably because of the divorce epidemic but perhaps also because of widespread porn--references to which are made several times in the film) and the young women bond with each other while feeling confused about how to approach the increasingly disinterested and disrespectful men whom they meet. I observe these phenomena or hear about them all the time in my professional practice and seeing a dramatic representation on an intimate scale in this film was quite fascinating.