123 Go Films
Coming of age movies are always an interesting angle to take for a movie, often called a ‘Bildungsroman’ if you want to be pretentious about it. A contained arc of growth and change in an hour and change, and despite the formulaic nature of it, it appeals to us to see our own coming of age experiences commented on or mirrored in film. Sometimes there’s a particular conceit, like finding you’re secretly a wizard, but other times it’s just about finding a new identity.
My Summer as a Goth comes from first time director Tara Johnson-Medinger, who co-wrote it with Brandon Lee Roberts. The movie stars Natalie Shershow as Joey Javitts, a bit of an outcast at her high school, but highly exacerbated by the recent passing of her father. At the same time, her mother is off on a critical book tour, so Joey gets sent to stay the summer with her hippie, kinda cool grandparents (Fayra Teeters and Jonas Israel).
Naturally despite the support and niceness of her grandparents, Joey is still in a funk and disconnected. But it changes when she meets the grandson of some friends of her grandparents, a goth kid named Victor Ireland (Jack Lewis). Of course, it happens mainly because she spots what appears to be a hanging attempt but is actually (naturally) a ‘performance piece’.
There are a lot of layers to the goth subculture, and it’s not a monolith, despite popular portrayal. Typically there’s a lot of black clothing, leather and lace, with an often morbid aesthetic, loosely connected to the conceptual nature of the more old school Gothic architecture and literature. Often there’s a reference to ‘wanting to appear outside’ to how they feel inside.
So in this case, that dichotomy appeals to the still mourning and confused Joey, who is highly attracted to the too cool Victor. Victor claims Joey is his ‘new project’, getting his friends involved to give her a new look, complete with pale makeup and a classic black lace outfit. But it’s more complicated than it seems, as Victor is clearly also connected to another girl named Pandora (Sophie Giberson), and he also just seems like kind of a dick.
At the same time, local self-proclaimed ‘punk’ Antonio (Eduardo Reyes) initially threatens and then apologizes to Joey, setting up a potential love triangle of sorts. Joey strains to find a new identity, while wondering if her new love is a true one or a terrible mistake.
One of the things that works about the movie is the performance of the lead Natalie Shershow, who is consistently excellent throughout. Her grandparents are alright with mostly pretty amusing dialogue, although they are sometimes giving stilted performances. The actor who plays Victor Ireland is harder to figure out, because it seems like he’s intentionally giving an annoying performance — as he is also written to be a bad person.
Still, there is something charming about Victor’s friends, who are goth but also completely pleasant and a loving couple. The movie has a fairly low budget feel to it in general, and a lot of the side performances are … mixed to be honest. And I never really felt the true sadness that the movie wants to convey about Joey, only her heartbreak and search for identity. So although it might not completely work as an arc about mourning a loss, it still works as a summer of romance and finding oneselves. Two of three ain’t bad.
Planning to see My Summer as a Goth? Click below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
My Summer as a Goth has a run time of 1 hour 40 minutes and is not rated.
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