Movie : Tanner Hall
Release Date : September 9, 2011
Studio : Anchor Bay Films
Director : Francesca Gregorini, Tatiana von Furstenber
Screenwriter : Francesca Gregorini, Tatiana von Furstenber
Starring : Rooney Mara, Georgia King, Brie Larson, Amy Sedaris, Chris Kattan, Tom Everett Scott
Genre : Drama
Official Website : TannerHallthefilm.com
IMDB Rating : 5.2
Story : Being a teenager in the movies is such a miserable experience it's a wonder anyone makes it through in the real world. But even by angsty, coming-of-age-movie standards, the boarding-school heorines of Tanner Hall have their work cut out for them. This movie features such weighty existential crises like a coming out, an affair, a homewrecking, and a contemplation of suicide, and it drags along with such plodding self-seriousness that you're likely to feel like you're going through them as well. The film is a beautifully-made slog; the confusing ins and outs of the teenage-adult transition are explored quite thoroughly (if not taken to the utmost extremes), but what's missing from its story is any sense of joy that doesn't feel ill-gotten or unearned.
Ranking chief among the joyless denizens of this movie is Fernanda (Rooney Mara), a moody teenager who's reunited with her hellraising childhood frenemy Victoria (Georgia King) at Tanner Hall boarding school. Victoria's in possession of a playfully destructive mean streak and is seemingly only happy when she's causing some kind of ruckus. But she is incredibly charming, and she immediately wins over the rest of Fernanda's friends.
Like all good high school tropes, this crew falls into familiar archetypes; Fern is the dour intelligent one; Victoria is the troublemaker; Kate (Brie Larson) is the minx; while Lucasta (Amy Ferguson) is the tomboy. Plot-wise, the movie concerns itself with predictable coming-of-age conundrums (introduce an edgy married man to a high school girl in Act One, and they will be having sex by Act Three), but what it really puts its weight behind are the characters themselves. This is a performance-driven movie, and a well-acted one if nothing else. So despite its shortcomings, Tanner Hall does muster a fair degree of success in this game plan.
Victoria is a fascinating, heartbreaking character, sexy but not oversexed, sad but not permanently dour and King plays her incredibly well; you can practically see the personal storm cloud hovering over her head as Victoria causes merry mayhem around Tanner Hall but buries her own demons deep where no one can find them. Mara, who's given better performances since this movie was made (2009; it's sat on the shelf for two years and is only coming out now that Mara's on the verge of potential stardom in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), isn't quite as good, but there are noticeable flashes in her 2009 self of what she was about to become. Larson and Ferguson work the sidelines well in less thankful roles, although the best performances in the movie come, frankly, from Amy Sedaris and Chris Kattan -- yes, him, and he's fantastic -- as a pair of teachers whose marriage is threatened by Kate's playful come-ons to the husband.
If only the movie gave them anything fun to do; a little bit of proverbial sunshine between all the gloom and doom. The movie is finely made and the loving manner in which the school is shot lends the film the a kind of rustic, Colonial feel similar to Dead Poets Society. But the comparisons more or less end there. A film like Dead Poets knew that self-discovery was a painful, miserable process, but there was also something kind of wonderful about going through it with your best friends. The ladies here barely seem to occupy the same space, let alone share any similar interests or hopes. The movie puts them through their journeys with no one else to lean on, and it drags us down with them as their lives fall apart. The girls are compelling pieces of different puzzles; interesting and potentially great individually, but awkwardly shoved together to make an uncomfortable whole; their movie has its charms but it's mostly full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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