A week of sun and fun at a holiday camp with the family could be heaven or it could be hell. For seventeen-year-old AJ (Nell Barlow), it’s definitely the latter, and her mum Tina (Jo Hartley) isn’t making things better with her forced attempts at merriment (“Ohh! Look at the cows!”). Tina is also heavily invested in making AJ, whom she persists in calling by her birth name April, “normal”—or at least to have her appear to be Tina’s version of normal, which involves wearing girly clothes and smiling a lot. That her daughter is fonder of scowling and of wearing oversize gender-neutral clothes is of no interest to Tina because she’s hoping that if she refuses to acknowledge her daughter as she is, said daughter will magically turn into something more pleasing.
AJ provides a running narration in Sweetheart, treating the audience to her acerbic take on everything from her family members to the environmental harm caused by the cattle industry. The holiday crowd also includes her older sister Lucy (Sophia Di Martino), whom AJ calls “the pregnant princess of Dunstable”; Lucy’s boyfriend Steve (Samuel Anderson), a fireman who met Lucy after she set the house on fire with her hair straighteners; and Lucy’s little sister Dayna (Tabitha Byron), whom AJ is expected to look after. Dad’s not in the picture, but from the point of view of anyone but AJ, these are perfectly nice people, and Steve in particular goes out of his way to try to make friends. None of that matters to AJ, however: she’s in a rut regarding her family and her general attitude toward life, and she’s clinging to both as if her life depended on it.
It’s worth noting that AJ’s problems are of a decidedly First World order, but it’s exactly those types of problems that are the bread and butter of YA movies and novels. As one journeys to adulthood, late adolescence is the last time most people have the time and capacity to dwell on their feelings rather than, say, earning a living. When your world is pretty small and feels entirely bounded, carving out a place for yourself can seem like more than enough of a task.
AJ knows other people don’t “get” her, but she’d rather be herself than conform. It looks like we’re in for a grim week of sulking by the seaside, then something happens to brighten AJ’s mood—the appearance of mega-cute lifeguard Isla (Ella-Rae Smith), who awakens something in AJ that she’s not sure how to deal with. For one thing, AJ is so used to being reflexively negative that she has a hard time switching gears to show that she actually likes someone and wants to be with them. More generally, it’s a big order to go from identifying yourself in terms of what you are not to claiming what you are.
Sweetheart is director Marley Morrison’s first film (she also wrote the screenplay), and it’s also lead actor Nell Barlow’s breakout role. Together, they bring a freshness and a sweetness to a story that’s been told in basic outline may times before, although perhaps not with a brainy young queer woman at the center of it all. That’s not just me talking: Sweetheart has been rewarded with a number of honors, including Breakthrough Performance from the British Independent Film Awards for Barlow and the International Jury Award from the Inside Out Toronto International LGBT Festival.
Speaking as an American, I also enjoyed getting a vicarious tour of a British holiday camp (Freshwater Beach Holiday Park in Dorset, to be precise), with its rows of identical caravans and lame evening entertainment guaranteed to drive teenagers elsewhere. Cinematography by Emily Almond Barr and Matthew Wicks captures the surreal nature of such an aggressively “normal” place, allowing us to see it through AJ’s eyes. Confining the action to a single location also helps underline AJ’s feeling of claustrophobia as she finds herself trapped in a exaggerated version of a world she feels has no place for her. | Sarah Boslaugh
Sweetheart is distributed by Film Movement and will be available digitally and on VOD beginning Feb. 10.
