Have you ever seen a movie that sounds like it would be awesome
on paper, but the execution was botched? That’s the experience I had with How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Based
on the short story of the same name by legendary fantasy author Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline), and directed
by cult director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig
and The Angry Itch, Shortbus), one would think combining these creative
minds with a lot of common overlap would make for a strong, trippy concoction,
like an absinthe cocktail. Instead, it ends up like an acid laced tequila shot.
In other words, this movie was really weird, but not in a good way.
Our story takes place in 1977 during Queen Elizabeth’s
silver jubilee, and follows Enn (Alex Sharp), a shy teenager who is an active
member of Croydon’s burgeoning punk scene. One night, he and his friends
stumble upon a party where all the participants wear strange outfits and take
part in bizarre rituals. They mistake it for a performance art gathering, but unbeknownst
to them, they’re all aliens visiting Earth to complete a mysterious rite of passage.
There, he meets Zan (Elle Fanning), a rebellious alien who doesn’t see eye to
eye with her conformist colony. She immediately takes a liking to Enn, so she
runs away with him and begs him to teach her the ways of his culture.
How to Talk to Girls
at Parties tries to be a lot of things: a coming-of-age story, a
fish-out-of-water tale, a love letter to first-wave punk, a sickeningly sincere
love story, an homage to 70’s sci-fi, an experimental arthouse film, hell, one could
even read a Brexit metaphor in the final showdown between the aliens and the
punks. But in its attempt to be all of these things, it ultimately becomes none
of them, scratching the surface of its topics, but not cutting deep enough to
draw any blood. While its ambition can’t be denied, the lack of cohesive focus
leads to this awkward clashing of ideals and aesthetics.
The premise of the British punk scene being an alien’s first
impression of Earth is hilarious in and of itself, and there are some obvious
parallels between the bizarre alien culture and Thatcher era England
(particularly its emphasis on tradition, conformity and consumption). Zan naturally
out of place with all the normal people, fits in with the punk lifestyle so
naturally that Queen Boadecia (Nicole Kidman), a Vivien Westwood-esque figure in
the community takes her under her wing and thrusts her onstage where she improvises
a song about the brutal nature of her species, and the nihilistic crowd is none
the wiser.
Aesthetically, there’s a lot of push and pull. The costumes
look something like A Clockwork Orange by
way of Klaus Nomi, the soundtrack has some killer cuts from The Damned, The Velvet
Underground and Mitski, and Elle Fanning’s otherworldly acting method is put to
great use here. A lot of the movie’s inherent weirdness comes from the writer
and director stretching an 18-page short story to feature length, and while
alienating seems to be the vibe they’re going for, sometimes it goes too far.
The introductory scene where we first meet our protagonists is shot in a
dropped frame rate for some reason, there’s a really trippy sequence where Enn
and Zan mind meld (I think) that resembles a deleted scene from Across the
Universe, complete with a gratuitous Beatles lyric drop, and there’s another
scene where Enn astral projects (again, I think) that more like something they’d
play at the MOBA.
Bottom line, How to Talk
to Girls at Parties is too weird to live but not unique enough to preserve.
I can see this getting a cult following when people eventually discover it on video
or Netflix, but like a bad acid trip, it could be enough to turn you off to it
altogether.
4/10
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