Three teens explore friendship and sexuality in Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s AS YOU ARE
AS YOU ARE (Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, 2016)
Village East Cinema
181-189 Second Ave. at 12th St.
Opens Friday, February 24
212-529-6799
www.asyouare.movie
www.villageeastcinema.com
At the beginning of Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s compelling feature debut, As You Are, two figures disappear into the woods, and a gunshot is heard. The rest of the film goes back and forth between the videotaped interrogation of the main characters and the events leading up to the shooting, told from multiple points of view. Carefully trying to avoid coming-of-age genre clichés, As You Are is an astute, expertly told story about teen angst by the twenty-three-year-old Joris-Peyrafitte, who cowrote the film with Madison Harrison and composed the score with Patrick Higgins. It’s 1993-94, and Jack (Owen Campbell) is a loner, a friendless high school skateboarder who listens to music (GG Allin, the Melvins, Nirvana) in his room, takes long, solitary bus rides, and lives with his single mother, Karen (Mary Stuart Masterson), in an isolated house in upstate New York. Karen is dating Tom (Scott Cohen), whose own loner son, Mark (Charlie Heaton), hits it off immediately with Jack. They are soon joined by fellow high school outcast Sarah (Amandla Stenberg), as flashbacks show the trio dealing with bullying, drugs, first love, physical abuse, firearms, and sexual identity while Detective Erickson (John Scurti) continues his questioning and the narrative heads toward an ambiguous conclusion.
Sarah (Amandla Stenberg), Mark (Charlie Heaton), Jack (Owen Campbell) take aim at adolescence in AS YOU ARE
Winner of a 2016 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, As You Are takes its name from one of Nirvana’s biggest hits, “Come as You Are” (“Come as you are, as you were / As I want you to be / As a friend, as a friend / As a known enemy”); in fact, the death of band leader Kurt Cobain plays a critical role in the film. Campbell (The Americans, The Hudson Tribes), Heaton (Stranger Things, Shut In), and Stenberg (The Hunger Games, Lemonade) form a kind of Jules and Jim musketeer trio with hints of Band of Outsiders, three teens who find solace only in one another. Joris-Peyrafitte scored quite a coup casting late-1980s/early-1990s star Masterson (At Close Range, Some Kind of Wonderful) in her first film in more than a decade (she had taken time off to raise her family); the gorgeous fifty-year-old actress plays Karen with an implicit understanding of teen ennui and alienation, clearly identifying with all three students. (Of course, she could have played the role of Sarah back in the 1980s.) Expanded from a student film Joris-Peyrafitte made with and starring childhood friend Harrison, As You Are also features powerful cinematography by documentary veteran Caleb Heymann, including stunning overhead shots looking straight down, the characters unrecognizable, as if they could be anyone, experiencing common problems that so many face. As You Are is an atmospheric, beautifully made film by a young director to watch.