We all knew her. The lithe, balletic beauty with swishy hair, glossed lips, and cotton-candy pink polished nails that could scratch across the chalkboard of your fragile high school psyche at any unforgiving second. Call her the queen bee. Call her a homecoming horror. Call her a hidden heartache of beautiful nightmares. But where is she now?
Young Adult (written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman) gives the ugly, honest, wickedly enrapturing answer to that question. Mavis (Charlize Theron) is that very princess whose looks and abrasive entitlement kept her on a prized pedestal in her dumpy Midwestern hometown for years. Shucking the suck hole of suburbia, she escaped to pursue the high life as a writer in Minneapolis, a gilded dream whose amber glow has been significantly diffused. The film opens with Mavis hungover, disheveled and divorced. Living in a derelict, cluttered high-rise apartment, the dysfunction surrounding her a brutal reality of just what a damaged and downtrodden show horse she really is (lest she try to prove to us otherwise later with lipstick, a curling iron and strappy sandals).
She is in the midst of writing the draft of a soon to be canceled young adult book series (think Sweet Valley High) of which she is the ghost writer when she receives an emailed birth announcement from her former beloved boyfriend, Buddy (Patrick Wilson). The birth of her ex-beau's baby strikes a chord with her—albeit one completely off-key—ultimately leading her to throw her hastily packed bags and her far-too-forgiving Pomeranian into her car to drive back home and visit Buddy. Okay...to f**k Buddy and reclaim him as her own at any cost.
Here one might think the rom-com formula would ensue: The damaged woman seeking out the guy who's gonna fix her with love and smiles and a saccharine soundtrack. But this isn't Hope Floats, thank god. This is a film written by Diablo Cody. And Mavis isn't a lovable ne'er do well who's bound to find love in the end. She's a drunk, depressed, venomous woman-child who drives across the state on a delusional mission to steal her ex-boyfriend from his current state of peaceable matrimony and fatherhood.
All signs point to hating the despicable Mavis. She's rude, she's entitled, she's a gluttonous alcoholic. However, with humor, tragedy and something so uniquely devilish, Cody crafts a character to whom you can't and won't turn a blind eye. Theron's glaring beauty has something to do with that, as does her palpably perfect acting ability. But there's something else. Mavis has her moments of tenderness. They're few and far between, but they're there, breaking up her desperately aggressive search for happiness. So when she growls at a waiter, forgets to feed her dog, tries to break up a marriage, and drunkenly brings a family gathering to a horrifying halt, you'll give a hearty holy-shit-did-she-just-say-that laugh. But you can't be mad at her; she's ruined and, sadly, there just might be no saving her.
There are certainly some nay saying Hollywood happy-enders who might question why a feature film by a lauded writer and director has you spending 90 minutes with a deplorable, damaged woman. The immaculate cast and Cody's accurate sense of dialogue that has only evolved since Juno will triumphantly squelch any doubts as to why this precise, addictive movie came to fruition. On the far opposite end of the spectrum from stunted Mavis in terms of development, Cody is clearly flourishing as a writer, proudly proving that films by women, about women can still blow your f**king mind even if they deal with something other than finding the perfect man and hairdo.
At a Q&A following the WGA screening of Young Adult at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International last night, the very down to earth, very humble Cody shared why she wrote the film, why she thought it would never get made, the best kind of mix tape, and the value for burgeoning writers to get as many eyeballs as possible on their work. She also hinted at her next project, her directorial debut that begins shooting in February about a young woman who abandons her hard core Christian family for a life in Las Vegas. Post Q&A, I downed a chardonnay for courage and gushed my admiration to the accessible and exceedingly appreciative Miss Cody, resolutely avoiding any urge to immediately pee my pants and squeal. Mostly...
Look for Young Adult in theaters this December.
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