Now, I’m no teenage girl. Never have been. But stories on film about adolescent girls is a fairly common thread. And a soaring trend, the demographic of which perhaps has the strongest transition in our lives. So when something seriously special leaps from the pool, I have no choice but to lead with my heart and shout about it. Director Jenny Gage, and cinematographer Tom Betterton, collaborate to craft a mini-marvel of a documentary, All This Panic, about girls on the journey through promising young teenhood in Brooklyn.
I say mini, as at less than 90 minutes this felt way, way too short. That’s a personal gripe, that doesn’t alter my love for the project, only demonstrates my longing to delay the splendour. It’s easy to be on the outside now, looking in. But it was way harder to have personal perspective when living through those turbulent teen years.
All This Panic is a candid portrayal, as well as a nostalgic reminder. Even New York felt homely, and I am yet to visit the great city. The Boyhood comparisons are valid, the transitions from scene to scene as well as the physical changes of the girls over the years, are immaculately captured, and seamlessly realized.
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We ought to not trip up here and call these girls characters. These are living, breathing human beings heading towards adulthood via altered hairstyles and the NYC subway system. Aware of their private school privilege perhaps, the teenagers are given a respectful breadth of air to simply talk about their evolving lives without giving us an urge to judge.
We meet Lena with braces and boyish haircut, and over the three years those long locks of hair and glowing smile only go part-way to showing her development. It is perhaps Lena’s divorcing and ever-conflicting parents that perhaps make her appear as strong as she comes across. There is her father’s declining mental health and the pressures of being successful at college to contend with.
On another spectrum, but in the same universe, African-American Sage is not going to the prom, challenges her mother with a kind of defiant logic, but she still knows where she stands. “Embrace your differences.” she says, though it is not necessarily her ethnicity she grapples, with but rather the fact her dad passed away, and that not wanting to touch the now messier garden is a timely reminder.
There is the surfer, Olivia, who might very well like girls and she doesn’t want to tell her parents. Not out of fear of the reaction, but rather that she just hasn’t processed her own feelings yet. Olivia wants to have that conversation on the right terms, without having to feel a label is attached.
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Meanwhile, Ivy is easy-going and care-free, attending parties and hang-outs with her boyfriend like a couple of summertime lovebirds. Her extroverted, casual outlook allows us to see that there can be the active social life to go alongside the kind of ambitious thinking one would have yearned for more at that age.
Slightly younger than the aforementioned girls, but certainly in the same boat, Dusty and Delia almost demonstrate the next line of hope, even though not too far behind in the cycle of youth. Dusty is pretty self aware, but not always a confident reflection, and is quick to be brutally honest with her older sister, Ginger. And Delia, not looking forward to going back to school, is beginning to question her own self-assuredness, as life’s little embellishes challenge the type of person she thought she was.
Each stepping stone is different, of course, for these girls, but perhaps that strand of Ginger is the one that lingers. There’s a gravely attitude to this girl, gradually keeping her distance from the inevitable changes afoot. As best as she can, anyway. Won’t be told what to do, a kind of rebellious whiff, and a bark that might well be harsher than her bite.
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In one conversation with her father, a relationship that already appears volatile, Ginger stands her stubborn ground in a discussion about her future. But by the end, that chat has overwhelmed her, and she is silenced to tears. Its a heart-breaking moment, she may be wrong, may not even know what she wants, but she is human with fragility.
At a later reunion, with her long-time friend Lena, she surely can see the evolution of her peers. And yet, Ginger may still be floating aimlessly, not to say she has no ambition or drive, but rather her feet have yet to touch land. Her sharp edges grow with her, as she enters womanhood, and whether you would want to avoid the wrong side of her or not, she is a fascinating, magnetic soul all the same.
Those varying parent / teenager conversations we’ve all been part of one way or another – from both sides for some of us. Same too can be said for the kind of self-expression – derived from angst, growth of the mind, life experience – that bring these girls to life before our eyes. Their string of words so eloquent, yet naturally spoken, it would have the Dawson’s Creek writers shaking their heads in realisation of where they went wrong.
The young women of All This Panic are just figuring stuff out. One girl remarks so honestly that you look back and see yourself as someone who was confused when you thought you knew it all. Or that teenage girls are looked at – dare we say, sexualised – but people don’t seem to want to hear what we have to say.
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These young friendships are both fragile and strong, for as time ticks by you wonder if it will last. Two girls quarrel on the way one should react to a friend passing out at a party – the disagreement on whether it is laying a blanket on them or tucking them in could be a cousin of the big blow-up scene between Amy and Molly in Booksmart.
And the radiant, meticulous way that Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton window these girls through their lenses is a thing of beauty. Whether it’s Delia’s freckles or Ginger’s scowl, the camera portrays near-enough every tone of skin and conversation. At times what makes All This Panic so moving is that the camera captures an indescribable essence of these girls in real-time as they talk, react, gesture, sigh – feels like an aspect of film art is coming-of-age too.