Teen Spirit (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 92 minutes.

PG-13

If there was ever a title to turn me off, this is it. There have been some good movies about teenaged girls in the past (Mean Girls, 2004, for one), but most are not my cup of tea.

This, however, blew me away. Tightly written and directed by Max Minghella and greatly enhanced by inventive cinematography (Autumn Durald), this is so good it flies by.

While it’s a prosaic tale of a teenaged girl, Violet (Elle Fanning), entering a singing contest, it’s the music, production values, and the choreography that really serve as the surprises of the film. The music is from present-day pop stars like Ariana Grande, Robyn, Grimes, Katy Perry, and others. Fanning also sings an original song by Carly Rae Jepsen and Jack Antonoff.

The film was originally written in 2009 to be set in Poland with 90% of the dialogue in Polish, but that proved impossible because they couldn’t find anyone to star in it who could sing and dance and speak two languages and act, too. So they sent the script out and when Fanning saw it, she had been looking for just such a vehicle. She sent Minghella a video of her performance at the 2016 Montreux Jazz Festival and her voice sold him.

Fanning sings the songs herself and their presentation knocks your socks off. Her electric personality seemingly comes out of nowhere as Violet is an unhappy, dour girl but when she gets onstage in front of a microphone she morphs into a superstar.

Fanning is buttressed by two scintillating supporting performances. Violet is “managed” by a decrepit-looking but sympathetic Russian, Vlad (Zlatko Buric). Rebecca Hall, almost unrecognizable the way she’s made up, plays Jules, an ambitious music agent. Both are award-quality (as is Fanning) and add immeasurably to the film.