An adorable infant cackles to his fathers antics, behind the camcorder, until the infant, giggling to a point of unbalance, tips over and bumps his head. Two school girls, engaged in a catfight, punch, kick and pull hair as their classmates egg them on, watching and recording with their camera phones. A sinewy, washed out woman is questioned about her sexual habits from an unidentified man behind the camera before the same man grips her by the throat and engages in sexual activity. The camera pans out the opening montage of viral videos to a darkened room revealing a Macintosh and a hormonal teenager, Robert (Ezra Miller, “City Island”) masturbating to violent pornography.
This 2008 Cannes Film Festival and 2009 Wisconsin Film Festival independent drama entry, “Afterschool,” directed by breakout U.S Brazilian director, Antonio Campos, delves into the angst ]-plagued sexual and rebellious nature of New England prep school students while hinting at the troubles associated with a technology fueled society where virtually anything we can point our cell phones toward becomes public. In a world dominated by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, privacy ceases to exist.
Blatantly unrestrained sexual indicators exact a raw high school experience, sufficiently evidencing the teenage sexual curiosity. We all know teenagers aren’t angels anyway. Antonio understands that hormones are uncontrollable, thereby making sexuality unavoidable. Wide screen scenes focus up the skirt and down the shirt of an attractive teacher. Students passionately kiss in the background while another seeks comfort from his mother.
The introverted protagonist, Robert epitomizes kids at the bottom of the high school social hierarchy. He doesn’t participate in sports, the “cool” kids copy his homework assignments, he wastes a majority of his free time watching violent and intimate viral videos of interactions between people to compensate for a lack of friends. His ominous and personality, justified by a shocking revelation at the end of the movie elucidates the confusion and search for identity during adolescence. While filming an empty hall for his audiovisual class, he befalls on the popular senior twins who stumble into the hallway and die from spiked cocaine right before his eyes. Unbeknownst to him, someone was filming the scene with a cell phone.
The unknown actors are adept at their craft; combining gesticulation with dramatic facial expressions to compensate for the few lines they speak, while moments of prolonged silence or cacophonies of noise tax the auditory senses.
For example, the twin’s deaths begin with silence. They stumble from a door, collapse and writhe in agony, screaming and moaning in Robert’s arms, until once again the environment is eventually devoid of sound. The scene, viewed through the camcorder Robert leaves behind, is quickly blocked by throngs of deafening and excitedly curious students. Silence, noise, silence and even louder noise compels us to jump into the scene and wade through the wall of students to quench the irate emotion desiring to berate Robert and force an answer out of his lanky frame. It unnerved me not knowing why sitting and watching these girls die was more effective than contacting a teacher. I had to remind myself that this was just a movie.
Irritatingly inconvenient camera angles, obscure lens focuses and slow camera panning animates Antonio’s artistic emulation of, “the slow-burn pacing of Gus Van Sant,” according to the Wisconsin Film Festival summary. Despite the director’s commendable use of metaphorical imagery and repetition as an artistic piece, “Afterschool” as entertainment can be hard to sit through. A burning irate sensation builds up when the camera focuses on a faucet for several minutes before Robert leans his face under the running water.
Reminiscing about my prep school days, students would frequent the infirmary for prescription medication – Robert avoids his guidance counselor while popping medication provided by the school; students returned to school after vacations with drugs and alcohol – his jock roommate, Dave (Jeremy White, “The Speed of Life”), smuggles in drugs and alcohol for sale to other students; an exploration with sex was rampant – Robert loses his virginity to classmate, Amy (Addison Timlin, “Cashmere Mafia”). You can’t denounce Antonio’s vision of high school – sex behind bushes, masturbation and “your mom” jokes – because coming from a New Ensgland boarding school myself; he hits the prep school life dead on. No where in the brochure, before applying, does it mention the random drug searches, late night “sexcapades” in dorms, the music building or for the daring – the open fields and the favorability for students with lineage and money.
