I Start Counting<\/span>\u2013and found a melancholic, adolescent movie, all elbows and knees and awkward longing for what used to be and what is still to come.<\/p>\nThe basic story: In a small English town where the old houses are being torn down for redevelopment, a Catholic schoolgirl begins to suspect that her (adoptive? step-?) older brother, on whom she has a severe crush, is the local serial killer. The movie portrays England as a culture<\/span> in its awkward adolescence, childishly trying on big-girl sexy clothes, unaware that its panties are showing. The mystery moves quickly and yet the movie itself feels quiet and lingering, with the girl going back to her ruined childhood home and swaying back and forth in the backyard swing, or bumping her way down the staircase on her bottom after her first encounter with pale ale. <\/p>\nThe movie\u2019s portrayal of adolescent girls\u2019 sexuality is surprisingly sensitive, maybe because it\u2019s based on a novel by a woman. Wynne and her friend Corinne skitter nervously from tarting themselves up and enjoying boys\u2019 and men\u2019s attention to pulling away when masculine aggression goes from thrilling to scary. The movie shows, quickly and fairly subtly, how often men pass off their threats as \u201conly protecting you.\u201d These teenage girls\u2019 skins prickle when they\u2019re around certain older men, but they\u2019re also still the kind of foolish virgins who brag about how many men they\u2019ve slept with.<\/p>\n
The movie\u2019s flaws pretty much all come in the actual suspense\/killer narrative. The two twists are both handled somewhat clumsily, the main villain\u2019s Big Villain Speech is wrong-footed in several different ways (although his final line is unexpected and good), and the pacing is strange. I didn\u2019t feel much suspense by the time we start finding out what really happened. That\u2019s fine (and anyway Kindertrauma disagrees, so you might as well), since I was so invested in the characters and their emotional journeys, but just know that this is a thriller in which a shot of a bulldozer plowing over a sewing machine is much more intense than the reveal of the killer.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EDGE OF FIFTEEN: On a recommendation from Kindertrauma, I watched the 1969 suspense flick I Start Counting\u2013and found a melancholic, adolescent movie, all elbows and knees and awkward longing for what used to be and what is still to come. The basic story: In a small English town where the old houses are being torn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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