Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Marley Morrison
Starring: Nell Barlow, Ella-Rae Smith, Jo Hartley, Sophia Di
Martino, Samuel Anderson, Tabitha Byron
Not sure there is anything worse for a teenager than the family holiday,
especially the later years; that threshold era where new identities and
independences are formed, fresh styles fatally cramped by the ubiquity of
your family and, worst luck, your reliance upon them in a vacation
context. I mean, it’s not like you can mug your parents off and meet up
with your mates when you’re miles away from them, is it? Instead, you’re
forced to cleave close to the folks, who tell you to ‘have fun’ and to
‘try new things’. You know, the exact sort of thing they’re completely
suspicious about you doing for the other 51 weeks of the year. And yeah, I
know it’s tough for parents dealing with vexed teens on a trip which
they’ve saved up for, organised and hoped will bring the family together
for one last adventure, but the focus in Marley Morrison’s comedy
drama Sweetheart is on the former casualty, and, such is its
excruciating relatability, it’s brought back some pretty raw memories.
IT’S SO UNFAIR!
Nell Barlow’s AJ is an earnest gay teen (the second adjective only
applied here as it’s such an issue for the character herself), the type of
yute whose insecurities manifest in a jejune, hard-done-by superiority.
Following AJ’s suspension from school, single mum Tina (Jo Hartley)
takes AJ (along with younger sister, older sister and brother-in-law) on a
caravan holiday to an amazing-when-you’re-under-ten-or-over-fifty isolated
coastal resort: nightmare. The uncoolest place in the world, in other
words, haunted by the most unhip.
I’m unsure if Morrison deliberately based AJ’s look on Harry Enfield’s
character in Kevin and Perry Go Large but the likeness is
manifest. Similarly congruous with Kevin are the socially awkward
interactions AJ initially makes with resident lifeguard, the willowy Isla
(Ella-Rae Smith), who AJ promptly falls in love with and with whom
enjoys the up/down holiday romance which forms Sweetheart’s central narrative.
Sweetheart makes some neat, canny observances of teen angst,
which is simultaneously the most ridiculous and devastating of experiences
and given appropriately even-handed treatment here. One of the little gang
AJ falls in with whitters on about flat earth conspiracies while high,
with that authentically hopeless intensity kids have when they anxiously
want to believe in something unconventional, as if to cock a snook at the
world. It’s a similar principle to falling in love at that age,
Sweetheart suggests, wherein AJ projects an ideal onto Isla,
their tentative fumblings a transaction more about wanting to be in love
than the genuine, hard won real thing.
However, a winning aspect of Marley’s script is how there isn’t a heavily
signalled learning moment presented. Instead, the film weaves in more
credible and rather lovely occasional breaks for AJ from the
self-perpetuating torment of being a gay kid with a chip on the shoulder.
Sweetheart is too savvy to suggest people grow up overnight,
and too respectful of its audience to expect us to automatically ‘like’
its characters too, who are at times selfish, whiney and unreasonable -
like most people are in the heightened circumstances of a holiday camp.
Our empathy is naturally positioned with AJ, but the great Jo Hartley
gives the shrewishly written mum Tina a patina of sympathy which
transcends her gripey dialogue. Hartley is something. Remember her in
David Brent: Life on the Road, pulling comedy pathos seemingly out of thin air in the same casual
manner that the stage magician at Sweetheart’s stage show produces hankies from a hat? She is as fantastic as ever
here, giving the film an awkwardly emotional core, and her spikey
interchanges with her daughter a wincing resonance.
We’re familiar with cringe comedy, but Sweetheart deftly
transposes to cringe drama, where it turns out that the everyday
sufferance of people isn’t quite so amusing after all, thanks. And, yes,
this plucky feature length debut is occasionally a bit ropey, and not
quite as cute as it aspires to be, but in its sincere invocation of
teen-drama you may well find a little something in your eye as this
holiday comes to a close.
Sweetheart is on UK/ROI VOD now.
