Young Adult

We all knew one back in high school. You know, the popular girl blessed with stunning features, who also displayed a towering superiority complex and could make you feel miserable with one of her insensitive quips. Over the years we’ve grown accustomed to seeing her as the villain in countless teen movies (hello, Mean Girls), but now screenwriter Diablo Cody has thrown an intriguing proposition our way: fast forward a couple of decades after life in high school and tell the story from the popular girl’s perspective. And boy, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is the gorgeous blonde who never abandoned her mean Prom Queen ways and is now making a living as a ghost writer on a series of young adult novels. When confronted with the news that her teenage sweetheart (Patrick Wilson) has just become a father, she makes the erroneous decision to return to her Minnesotan hometown and rescue him from blissful domesticity.

Diablo Cody has already established her talent for writing strong, unconventional female characters (she came up with Juno's vast repertoire of witticisms), but Mavis may well be her greatest creation to date and is impeccably brought to life by Charlize Theron. Clueless, narcissistic and with a tongue as venomous as a rattlesnake, everything about her feels ill-judged – although in an ashamedly entertaining sort of way. For instance, upon reencountering an old classmate (Patton Oswalt, the film’s moral compass) who was victim to a painful hate crime her instinctive reaction is to ask if his penis is still working. She may have left school a long time ago, but Mavis has hardly grown up.

But director Jason Reitman, who is on his fourth feature and has yet to make a bad film, is making a dark comedy here, meaning Young Adult has its fair share of grim undertones. Beneath all the make-up and glitzy façade, Mavis is clearly a woman unaware of her depression, her dependence on alcohol and, more crucially to her, how fast she is becoming obsolete as an author (she specialises in teen romances but none of them feature vampires).

More impressively, just when you think the narrative is set on a redemptive track, Reitman is not afraid to pull a sudden 180° turn – this is one of those films in which everyone involved may not have learnt their lesson by the end credits. It may be discomforting and will feel like too much of a downer to some viewers, but it’s an ending that, amid the public embarrassment and Mavis’ heartbreaking need for companionship, somehow rings true.

4/5