King Jack (2015)
What IS growing up all about?…
Writer/Director Felix Thompson attempts to answer that question in King Jack – his 2015 Coming-of-Age film that tells the story of 15-year-old Jack (Charlie Plummer), who is suddenly asked to take care of his young cousin Ben (Cory Nichols).
At fifteen, Jack busies himself with molding and projecting his teenage self – from being cool through showcasing toughness and a know-it-all attitude. In other words, things that are incompatible with being seen hanging around with a kid (even if he’s your little cousin).
Falling in love, games of truth and dare, wild high-school parties, and bullying – are just some of the narrative themes. But if you’re smirking, thinking you have already seen such films, you should know that you have never seen them quite in the same way as they are shown in King Jack – which manages to capture one’s attention from its very first scene and hold it to the very end.
King Jack’s plot is original, the story engaging, and, combined with the excellent editing and pacing, it’s so good that one rarely notes the passing of time. There are a variety of youth-related themes in the subtext of the narrative. As a Coming-of-Age film, King Jack achieves and over-achieves its goal of delivering a true-to-life portrayal of the teenage years without cheap thrills and over the top dramatics.
The musical score does not call attention to itself yet enhances the narrative — coating it with slightly melancholic, nostalgia-filled touches that fine-tune the story of Jack’s rite-of-passage experiences. The sets and cinematography allow the film to “show” not “tell,” all of which attests to the high production quality.
Charlie Plummer’s natural performance in Jack’s role is undoubtedly one of the main highlights of the film. The choices that Jack makes, the things he says, and the way he says them reveal a lot about his personality. A teenager himself (fourteen during filming), Plummer manages to fully embody his role making Jack a character the viewer is more than willing to associate with…or judge.
With Avy Kaufman as casting director (her portfolio includes masterpieces such as The Sixth Sense), it doesn’t surprise that each character’s actions or reactions contribute to and affect the development of the story. Especially noteworthy are Yainis Ynoa and Chloe Levine’s performances in the supporting roles of Jack’s friends – undoubtedly one of the best portrayals of teenaged girls I have seen on screen.
Trailer
King Jack delivers an excellent cinematic experience similar to those seen in some of the best Coming-of-Age movies, right alongside Jeff Nichols’s Mud and Bouli Lanner‘s The Giants (with whom King Jack shares an atmosphere and poignancy). King Jack’s plot resolution is quite adept at tying together all the loose ends and ensuring a suitable superb finale to an already well-told story.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3863484/combined
King Jack (2015)
A must see!
King Jack delivers an excellent cinematic experience that ranks it right up there with some of the best Coming-of-Age movies.
5
Our rating
WHERE TO WATCH
The School of Life (2017)
1930s France. World War I has left many orphaned kids and Nicolas Vanier‘s 2017 film The School of Life (Original title: L’école buissonnière) tells the story of one of them – eleven-year-old Paul (Jean Scandel). He gets fostered by a woman who takes him to the countryside where she lives and works. There, Paul meets Totoche (Francois Cluzet), a poacher who lives in the forest, who he befriends. With Totoche as his guide, Paul discovers nature, but he also learns a secret about his relationship to the owner of the estate where he now lives that nobody wanted to reveal and which will lead to a very big change in his life.
Although eye-pleasing thanks to an abundance of beautifully shot nature scenes, many of which feature great variety from the animal world, the film suffers from a bizarrely lengthy duration. Prior to The School of Life its screenwriter, Jerome Tonnerre, has adapted for screen two other classics of sentimental childhood novels: My Mother’s Castle and My Father’s Glory. All three adaptations share a nostalgic tone and a slow pace of story development aimed mostly at people seeking aesthetic pleasure rather than a challenging or captivating storyline.
Trailer
The story itself is a tad predictable, especially for those who have read novels by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Combined with the slow plot development, this predictability could result in boredom though, in a way, if one is fond of heart wrenching dramas (as I am), The School of Life can be seen as a respite for its overall relaxing atmosphere.
This is not the first time that I’ve praised the performance of a new-comer in a Coming-of-Age film, but Jean Scandel embodies his character in an excellent and credible manner. The young French actor’s beauty and charisma enhances the picture as much as the natural beauty that surrounds him.
It is a pity that his character remains a bit statistic throughout the story. More events and happenings influencing his character would have made the story much more intriguing to watch.
Essentially the film shares a lot of common traits with the Italian 2013 flick The Story of Cino – The Child Who Crossed the Mountain and, if you have read my review of that film, you will notice some of the same observations. It’s a special subgenre of Coming-of-Age cinema and, if you explore the site, you may stumble upon several reviews of films that belong to it – (Jean-Loup Hubert‘s Le Grand Chemin is another one of them). All appear to be aimed at pre-teen audiences or adults prioritizing aesthetical beauty over challenging narrative.
Members of the adult cast were convincing enough in their roles, though no one more so than Francois Cluzet as the irritable yet skillful poacher who befriends the young Parisian boy and manages to share with him some of his lifelong gathered wisdom and love of nature. The inter-generational friendship between boy and his older mentor is a conventional one and is reminiscent of one explored in Goodnight Mister Tom (1998).
To summarize, The School of Life is a family-friendly film with Coming-of-Age motifs suitable for viewers of all ages, although aimed predominately towards younger audiences. It’s narrative is not overly dramatic or challenging but, for some viewers, it will deliver a welcomed respite from the many flicks charged with emotion or heart-wrenching finales.
[imdb]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6330246/reference[/imdb]
The film is available on Amazon Prime Video with English Subtitles
The School of Life (2017)
In short
The School of Life is a family-friendly film with Coming-of-Age motifs suitable for viewers of all ages.
3.3
Our rating
Tango argentino (1992)
Tango Argentino is a Coming-of-Age film from Serbia charged with emotion and a story that gradually charms and captivates its viewers with its wonderful messages – the most important of which are a love of life and the importance of kindness.
Ten-year old Nikola (Nikola Zarkovic) is the protagonist of the film. Despite his tender age, he is very entrepreneurial and self-reliant and is of a great help to his mother, who takes care of several old people in Belgrade. The little Nicola befriends many of his mother’s charges and assists her by helping them with shopping and cooking. His favorite charge is an old gentleman – a former singer who has managed to retain a fervent attitude towards life.
Nikola Zarkovic delivers an excellent performance in the role of a boy wise beyond his years and it’s easy for the viewer to sympathize with his efforts, even if sometimes one wishes that he would act more carefree as a child ought to. The story is told from his point of view and, although it is not clear who benefits more from the daily interactions – the elderly people or the boy who takes care of them, the Coming-of-Age nuances can not be missed.
The story is saturated with humanity, sincerity and warmth. The inter-generational friendship motifs bring to mind the 2014 films St. Vincent and Maicol Jecson. It also shares some common themes with the 2016 movie, Grand Hotel. Yet Tango Argentino is an original and unique film on its own, and it has this special vibe of the Balkans and touches one’s heart with its emotional, wise story about the meeting between the sunrise and sunset of our lives.
[imdb]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105531/reference[/imdb]
As this film has been made available on YouTube by its director, Goran Paskaljevic, we have included it with the review.
Tango argentino (1992)
In short
Tango Argentino is an original and unique film which has a special vibe of the Balkans and touches one’s heart with its emotional, wise story about the meeting between the sunrise and sunset of our lives.
4.4
Our rating
Cuernavaca (2017)
Exploring the fragile nature of a child’s soul, whose world gets torn apart after a traumatic event, is a theme frequently addressed in the Coming-of-Age cinema.
It is also the central theme of the 2017 Mexican film Cuernavaca written and directed by Alejandro Andrade. In it a young boy’s life changes entirely after his mother gets hurt in a store hold-up. With an absent father and an aunt living far away in Canada, young Andy (Emilio Puente) is taken to Cuernavaca to the home of his distant paternal grandmother (Carmen Maura).
Most Mexican films I have seen never miss addressing class inequality, and Cuernavaca is no exception. While Andy’s grandmother lives in a lush mansion, only the walls of its garden are separating it from a world of poverty and crime. Andy’s grandmother has enough on her hands, with an estate to look after, a disabled daughter (played by Dulce Domínguez) and last, but not least, a trauma of her own that she is still struggling with.
Acting
The quality of the acting performances is not consistent across the cast, especially in the case of those with supporting roles. Yet since the film’s narrative focuses strongly on Andy’s experiences, it has to be noted that Emilio Puente’s acting is convincing enough in portraying a spoiled, yet impressable, preteen who still has a naïve look regarding society and life in general. His character development is mostly done through visual hints and dialogue that is effective enough so that, in the first ten minutes of the picture, one gets a pretty good idea of the personality of the main character. He’s a shy, loner of a boy who is growing up while rarely seeing his father – lacking a male role model that has turned him into what’s best described as “mommy’s little boy”. The film also features a stunning performance by Carmen Maura.
Trailer
A stranger at his grandmother’s house, Andy is looking for support and acceptance. Intriguingly enough it is not the grandmother that offers him compassion, but her mentally challenged daughter and the son of the gardener – although their manner of doing so and their personalities could not be more different. Naturally the lack of a male role model has contributed to the afflictions of the main protagonist and his nativity impairs the recognition of the fact that compassion can turn into exploitation in the blink of an eye.
The interpersonal relationships explored by the narrative bring to mind two other Coming-of-Age films: The Spanish Gardener (1956) in character definition and the need for a role model, and John John in the Sky (2001) for the portrayal of the positive nature of the friendship between a young boy and a disabled woman. The narrative of Cuernavaca also includes some slight homoerotic overtones, highlighted by the camera and hinted at as the story develops.
The biggest flaw of the film is the lack of originality in its narrative, a fact that gets compensated for by the beautiful cinematography and slightly melancholic, yet suitable, musical score. If you’re looking for a film that has swift exciting action, you won’t find that in Cuernavaca. The plot develops at a slow pace, not untypical for movies with similar motifs. But almost all films that deal with grief, etc. use that approach.
Visual Aesthetics
The cinematographer uses a warm color palette that prettifies the images. Some of the most visually appealing scenes represent the dreams/nightmares of the main protagonist, with extreme close-ups and slow motion artistically combined. The musical score too is one of the better ingredients in the cinematic structure of Cuernavaca due to its unobtrusive yet rhythmic patterns, which perfectly fit with the events on screen.
If you haven’t seen many Coming-of-Age films with a similar theme, you are likely to enjoy the film more than I did. While I appreciated its beautiful aesthetic, the masterful acting of Carmen Maura (I know several elderly rich Spanish women whose behavior is just like her characterization) and the aspiring Emilio Puente as Andy, for me the film did bring on a slight sense of boredom. I did not discover many nuances in repeated viewings prior to writing this review, which is why I do not believe that the film is capable of lingering in the viewer’s mind after the final credits roll.
[imdb]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4599584/reference[/imdb]
Cuernavaca (2017)
In short
Cuernavaca explores the fragile nature of a child's soul, whose world gets torn apart after a traumatic event.
4
Our Rating
Available at Amazon Video