Air

Despite pleasing visuals and above average direction, Air falls victim of being good but not great in the over-crowded field of WLW teen dramas.

Air‘s lead is a standard quiet but intelligent teenage girl. This one’s name is Manja. Manja’s unremarkable teen existence is shaken by Louk. Louk is beautiful, wild, radical and lives in a commune-type situation. Manja carries a flame for Louk though pushy teenage boys get in the way. Eventually, Manja and Louk grow close as people and connect on an emotional level. Once this happens, there’s no stopping the girls from turning their friendship into a romance.

The issue with Air is that I’ve seen this movie before. More than once. There are few story beats that haven’t been covered in other WLW coming of age films. These films are already often samey and Air specifically doesn’t focus on doing much that’s new. So instead, we get a slow burn romance between a shy girl and an effervescent new girl. This culminates in them riding an electric scooter together, going for a swim in a small lake and looking directly into each other’s eyes while confessing emotional back story. It’s true that I’ve seen too many WLW movies before so my perspective is skewed, but absolutely none of this is new.

What is new but not necessarily correct is the tone that director Anatol Schuster took to this very common story. Air is meditative, slow and very much wants you to find it heavy and deep. This is a more unusual take for teen dramas. It’s strange, because I think Schuster’s direction is beautiful, but simply incorrect for this story. There’s a level of maturity and a lack of a sense of joy, urgency or trendiness which should populate a drama about teens. The characters in it look like teens, they act like teens but somehow the story they inhabit is one more fit for middle-aged people. Nothing about the visuals in Air feels youthful. Air is too slow and mature to appeal to teens but its focus on teenage characters means it won’t appeal as strongly to older adults either.

The direction is beautiful, though. The best moments of the film are when Schuster lets loose and does a scene that’s all visual and sometimes not even strictly real. The trips inside Manja’s head which show her poetic longing for Louk are gorgeous scenes. And overall, the film is pleasing to look at. I’m a big fan of the colours in this film. It’s a saturated pallet of cool tones which provides a beautiful, rich and emotional atmosphere. There’s some real ambition in the visuals which doesn’t match up to its dime a dozen story.

My thoughts on Air really boil down to the fact that the direction doesn’t match the story. The story is fine. I’ve seen it before. The direction is above average but not in harmony with the story. Anatol Schuster’s desire to make a poetic, metaphoric and languid visual treat of a film clashes with its common story of queer teen romance. Even as far as visually pleasing teen dramas go, there are better ones than this. So, Air is doomed to be a middling film in possibly the most populous WLW sub genre- queer teen dramas.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

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