Teenage kicks

A Chilean film now showing at Dom Kino would give Vitaly Milonov nightmares.

By Galina Stolyarova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: July 18, 2012 (Issue # 1718)

FOR SPT Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild) depicts the sexual awakening of Daniela and her battle to reconcile her body with her emotional needs.

The faceoff of lust and repression and the battle between hormones and morality are at the heart of Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild), which began screening at Dom Kino on July 12.

Based on the real-life blog of a 17-year-old Chilean girl, the film tells the story of Daniela (Alicia Luz Rodriguez), a young woman repressed by her ultra-religious evangelical mother Teresa (Aline Kuppenheim). The film documents Daniela as she experiences her first sexual desires, which know no boundaries and cannot be restrained by forces regardless of whether they are external or internal.

The tormented main character is first introduced to the audience as she experiences her first sexual urges. She is shown secretly pleasuring herself while lying among other teenagers who appear to be fast asleep. A few moments later viewers witness Daniela drop out of her strict evangelical school just a couple of weeks before final exams, because the shocking truth that the voluptuous sexually–starved teenager has seduced a classmate comes out.

Daniela’s is a story of a freshly awakened libido gone deranged. Her biggest nightmare is that her mother might discover her top-secret, extremely popular Joven y Alocada blog.

The real-life blog was written between 2005 and 2007 by Santiago resident Camilla Gutierrez. Gutierrez co-authored the screenplay and inspired the director and co-author, Marialy Rivas, to turn the story into a film — which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance International Film Festival in January this year.

FOR SPT Daniela experiments with both her boyfriend and a female colleague.

The 95-minute film is shot in a snappy, blog-type style, peppered with SMS-like verbal exchange and is in general somewhat reminiscent of a documentary drama. The effect is as if a cameraman had followed Daniela for a few weeks and then compiled the footage into a story. While the filmmakers left the arguments quick and concise, the love-making scenes, on the other hand, are much lengthier, with the idea to apparently allow for arousal — of heterosexual, homosexual or solo-sexual origin — to develop and reach its climax.

As much as she is becoming aware of the demands of her body, Daniela is ignorant of her emotional needs. Incredibly self-absorbed, the girl is enthusiastic about verbalizing her sexual needs on a blog — getting numerous invitations to explore them from both sexes. She does not realize, however, that she is hurting her boyfriend Tomas (Felipe Pinto), by being unfaithful to him with a young female colleague whom they both meet while working at a Christian propaganda television channel. When both of her lovers break up with her, Daniela cries like a child, not realizing what has gone wrong. Was she a bad lover? It does not occur to her that the very religious Tomas, who was initially reluctant to have pre-marital sex, took their relationship much more seriously than Daniela did, who saw their relationship as an exciting opportunity to explore the world of love-making and sexual pleasures.

Although confessional in nature, Daniela’s story stops short of being remorseful. While the blogger’s dive into her own sexuality is in full swing, her emotional world is largely a terra incognita for herself — as well as for others. Emotionally, the closest person to Daniela is her fragile, emaciated-looking aunt (Ingrid Isensee), who is dying of cancer, and whose death is another loss for the girl — the first one that she cannot replace. It is the aunt who talks Teresa out of locking her horny daughter up at home for a year — without even an Internet connection.

Stuffed with explicit, “soft core plus” sex scenes, including a passionate sex scene between Daniela and her attractive female co-worker Antonia (Maria Gracia Omegna), Young and Wild is Vitaly Milonov’s nightmare. The rage of Daniela’s mother, as shown in the film, would be humbleness personified compared to the reaction of the lcoal parliament deputy behind the city’s notorious “gay propaganda” law if he were to see the film.

The provocative film will and has undoubtedly graced LGBT culture festivals, and its appearance on the Dom Kino repertoire is nothing short of a miracle, considering the ever-tightening control of the authorities over cultural content, and growing homophobic hysteria.

Thankfully, Rivas avoids a preachy attitude, and simply tells the story, making it seem as realistic as possible. She does not ridicule Daniela’s remarkable apathy in anything she engages in, including sex, and rather appears above the conflict between the girl and her rigid, judgmental mother. The director leaves the main character during a time of loss, without either of her lovers or her aunt. Daniela is feeling lost, and, for the first time, is trying to get a sense of direction. It is during the frustration-charged finale that the heroine’s body and her emotions finally begin to communicate and come together as one.