"Skipped Parts" is good, unusual, challenging "small" film about sex, relationships and growing up. I really enjoyed it and thought it was pretty brave of everyone involved. I'm having fun trying to work out who found it more controversial: the zealots supposed to hate it, or the liberals itching for the zealots to hate it. All I can say is, thank goodness for the internet, without which I'd never have heard about it or seen it.
*spoilers from here* Jennifer Jason Leigh has a great vampy time as peroxided young Lydia, banished to Grovont (couldn't they spell Gros Ventre?) Wyoming from her Daddy's expensive Southern home with her illegitimate son Sam (as a punishment for her bad behaviour and for showing him up: Daddy's running for Governor). What starts as mere time in solitary becomes more interesting – for better and worse – for Lydia and Sam as they both meet their match. Maurey Pearce is one of the local kids "who can read" and is determined, with Sam's help, to know what are the "skipped parts" in all the books about love, marriage and sex. Hank Elkrunner is the Blackfeet cowboy whose steady persistence with the shiftless Lydia is finally rewarded. "Skipped Parts" may not be the most polished and definitive 'coming of age' type drama out there; but it wins my respect for many of the little details that set it apart from teenager and rom-com dross: the presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh, always a flag that something interesting's going on; the nice interaction between the two young leads, Bug Hall (Sam) and Mischa Barton (actually playing her age as Maurey); the quality of the cast, including Michael Greyeyes as Hank and Peggy Lipton as a pretty devastating Laurabel Pearce; the really fantastic sound, costumes, sets and locations.
If you find the idea of underage sex unpalatable, well, I'm sorry for you. It's very much a reality, as any look at any tabloid newspaper in any given month will tell you. And it always was: what an outrageous lie it is, that teen and extra-marital pregnancy didn't occur in more repressed decades. For me this was as much the story of Lydia's growing up as it was of Sam's – in fact, more so. I found Lydia's story by the end of the film more believable than Sam's; she's so like a child herself - so unwilling to do more than play at the drama of life.
Even I must admit that part of the ending did slightly jar on me. I live in a very liberal world: I've seen households made up of very unusual (and unexpectedly successful) combinations of people, and am only too happy with new, non-nuclear family images. But I wouldn't be altogether happy about a young teenager of my acquaintance watching this ending, and, perhaps, drawing the conclusion that if you leap backwards off a flight of steps there will always be someone there to catch you; because that simply isn't true. Conservative moment over. If you liked this film and want similar things, perhaps you'll be interested in the path I took to get here, which went something like this: Eric Schweig in the lovely modern fairytale "Big Eden". That film's director Thomas Bezucha, who also directed "The Family Stone", with its complicated modern family dynamics. Jennifer Jason Leigh, queen of unconventional roles (e.g. as Dorothy Parker and as Catherine Slocum, 'heroine' of "Washington Square"). Michael Greyeyes, an accomplished plains Cree First Nations dancer who I'd thought was pretty impressive in TV historical romance "Stolen Women, Captured Hearts". Films about outcasts, others, the different, the lonely - try "Trust" by Hal Hartley; "The Station Agent" and "Different for Girls".
*spoilers from here* Jennifer Jason Leigh has a great vampy time as peroxided young Lydia, banished to Grovont (couldn't they spell Gros Ventre?) Wyoming from her Daddy's expensive Southern home with her illegitimate son Sam (as a punishment for her bad behaviour and for showing him up: Daddy's running for Governor). What starts as mere time in solitary becomes more interesting – for better and worse – for Lydia and Sam as they both meet their match. Maurey Pearce is one of the local kids "who can read" and is determined, with Sam's help, to know what are the "skipped parts" in all the books about love, marriage and sex. Hank Elkrunner is the Blackfeet cowboy whose steady persistence with the shiftless Lydia is finally rewarded. "Skipped Parts" may not be the most polished and definitive 'coming of age' type drama out there; but it wins my respect for many of the little details that set it apart from teenager and rom-com dross: the presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh, always a flag that something interesting's going on; the nice interaction between the two young leads, Bug Hall (Sam) and Mischa Barton (actually playing her age as Maurey); the quality of the cast, including Michael Greyeyes as Hank and Peggy Lipton as a pretty devastating Laurabel Pearce; the really fantastic sound, costumes, sets and locations.
If you find the idea of underage sex unpalatable, well, I'm sorry for you. It's very much a reality, as any look at any tabloid newspaper in any given month will tell you. And it always was: what an outrageous lie it is, that teen and extra-marital pregnancy didn't occur in more repressed decades. For me this was as much the story of Lydia's growing up as it was of Sam's – in fact, more so. I found Lydia's story by the end of the film more believable than Sam's; she's so like a child herself - so unwilling to do more than play at the drama of life.
Even I must admit that part of the ending did slightly jar on me. I live in a very liberal world: I've seen households made up of very unusual (and unexpectedly successful) combinations of people, and am only too happy with new, non-nuclear family images. But I wouldn't be altogether happy about a young teenager of my acquaintance watching this ending, and, perhaps, drawing the conclusion that if you leap backwards off a flight of steps there will always be someone there to catch you; because that simply isn't true. Conservative moment over. If you liked this film and want similar things, perhaps you'll be interested in the path I took to get here, which went something like this: Eric Schweig in the lovely modern fairytale "Big Eden". That film's director Thomas Bezucha, who also directed "The Family Stone", with its complicated modern family dynamics. Jennifer Jason Leigh, queen of unconventional roles (e.g. as Dorothy Parker and as Catherine Slocum, 'heroine' of "Washington Square"). Michael Greyeyes, an accomplished plains Cree First Nations dancer who I'd thought was pretty impressive in TV historical romance "Stolen Women, Captured Hearts". Films about outcasts, others, the different, the lonely - try "Trust" by Hal Hartley; "The Station Agent" and "Different for Girls".