Califórnia at Tribeca

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Manuel on "Califórnia".

California could very easily have been called "Diary of a Teenage Girl." In fact, Estela, the young Brazilian teen in the 1980s at the heart of Marina Person’s film, would get along swimmingly with Minnie Goetz. They share not only a passion for eclectic art (visual in Minnie’s case, musical in Estela’s) but also a growing awareness of their own body and their sexual desires. I hate opening reviews with comparisons like these but Person’s film works so much like a beautiful companion to that other coming of age tale that I wish I could’ve caught them back to back. They have plenty to say to one another about teenage girls, sex, and the ways we seek in artistic outlets as a way to make sense and escape our own lives. Scored by what may well be the hippest mixtape soundtrack at the festival (Bowie! Joy Division! The Cure! New Order!), Person’s film even manages to lace through Estela’s story (via her uncle Carlos who’s come home from the west coast state from the film’s title) an AIDS subplot that doesn’t devolve into melodrama or mere background scenery.

Grade: B

Comments

[marcelo]

I've seen this, thought it was a charming movie. marina is the daughter of an important filmmaker here in brazil, luiz sérgio person, and even directed a doc about him.