Everyone’s experienced the specific kind of anxiety which leads us to ask ourselves some version of this question: “What would my younger self think of my older self?” Canadian writer-director Megan Park explores this question in surprising ways in My Old Ass, a delightful and insightful piece of magic-realist dramatic comedy.
In her film debut, Maisy Stella stars as Elliott Labrant, a newly-graduated 18-year-old looking forward to leaving her family’s idyllic rural Ontario cranberry farm for college. On the night of her birthday, Elliott and her friends take some mushrooms. While her friends have much more stereotypically hallucinogenic experiences, she sees her late-30s self, played by Aubrey Plaza. Older Elliott gives her younger self tons of advice, including valuing time with her two younger brothers and her parents.
The family piece is the only area where Park stumbles as a writer. Perhaps this has more to do with editing, but in any event, the film sometimes feels like a sampler platter in its attempts to squeeze emotion out of the very brief time it spends with Elliott’s mother (Maria Dizzia) and father (Alain Goulem). The limited time it spends with her brothers is indicative of a similar issue, but there is a more consequential subplot involving Elliott’s parents which disappointingly disintegrates in comparison to all the other things the film does so well in its brisk 89 minutes.
What My Old Ass does perfectly is the romance angle. Still exploring her sexuality, Elliott starts the film believing she’s a lesbian, but despite warnings from her older self, she starts falling for a new male farmhand named Chad (Percy Hynes White). Their icy-to-hot relationship is very convincingly written and played, and although there is one moment of blatantly manipulative storytelling involved, even that moment rings true and sincere between the three of them (Chad and the two versions of Elliott).
I don’t know whether any of this film is autobiographical, but the setting does help set it apart from a lot of contemporary coming-of-age films. It feels less reliant on technology and logistics than those set in big cities or even the suburbs, and so even for its slight pacing issues and short runtime, it feels less cluttered than most. The fact that we never see Elliott set foot on a college campus also helps; it keeps the film centered on her inner growth, as it should be, given the unique premise. Additionally, Park wisely uses Aubrey Plaza quite sparingly, and for very good reason. Perhaps this will annoy Plaza’s most ardent fans, but the older Elliott isn’t just there to give her younger self advice on every situation or minutiae of life. She seems to have a life that young Elliott can’t possibly know everything about, and that’s yet another element that keeps the film focused.
Any of us would want to ask our older self hundreds, maybe even thousands, of questions, and while young Elliott does certainly ask her fair share, the story isn’t subsumed by that pursuit. Instead, it gradually becomes more interested in flipping its own premise on its head ever so slightly. It blossoms into a dialogue between naïve optimism and a more experienced reserve, both of which are essential to fulfillment and contentment. If you never took any risks or made any mistakes, would you have really lived? | George Napper
