Shiva Baby was one of the best viewing experiences I had in the last couple of years, so I was excited for Emma Seligman’s follow-up.
I think I brought different expectations to what it ended up being.
Existing in a heightened world where a highschool is literally orbiting around the football team, Bottoms is a very different beast.
It is not trying to examine and pick apart human behaviour in an incredibly specific and intimate context.
Bottoms exists in a world without subtext, where the jocks literally run the school, and the final football match turns into a massacre. Filled with broad characters, The film is so heightened it feels like a live-action cartoon.
It felt more in keeping with the short skits Edebiri and Sennott put out a few years ago.
Our protagonists are hyper-self-involved, one is thankful for Ruby Cruz as Hazel, who provides the most grounded, human performance.
She provides the straight man to the leads, but also a flicker of redemption.
It almost feels like a more familiar, conventional conversion of the story would have been centred around Hazel and the other characters, with PJ and Josie as the comic relief. he diegesis is so OTT it it gives a runway for increasingly deranged set pieces - at one point, the characters detonate a bomb.
The movie is also really dark - our lead characters perpetuate a massive lie; Hazel is beaten to a pulp; the opposing school appear to be horror movie villains.
What is interesting is that the central characters are never meant to be likeable. And while they are low in the school hierarchy, the film makes it more nuanced:
Our antiheroes are so self-involved, their isolation might be partially self-induced.
One of the more subtle ironies of the film is that the moment the central pair fall apart is also the point when they realise the other members of the club have bonded and become friends. They have found meaning in the group that our leads never contemplated.
I cannot say I fell head over heels for it.
I think it is so heightened that not all of the jokes land. And the attempt to skew dark feels like a different movie.
Tonally it ends up feeling a bit jumbled, but that makes it more interesting.
An interesting movie, and I wish I could have seen it in the theatre.
With how distinct both pictures are, I would be keen to re-watch Bottoms after Emma Seligman has made a few more pictures, just to see where it sits in terms of their wider body of work.
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