Alena

Is anyone else tired of movies about the unkindness of teen girls that are made by by middle-aged men? Because I sure am.

Alena is about a new girl at an elite boarding school. She obviously gets bullied because that’s what happens when you’re new at a fictional boarding school. The awkward Alena makes an enemy of rich and popular girl, Filippa. However, Alena has two allies. The first is Fabienne, a pretty and aloof loner. Fabienne never really stops Alena being bullied but always shows up in the aftermath to give her some kind words of reassurance and vague flirtation. Alena’s second ally is Josefin, someone from her past who’s willing to stand up for her friend and chooses to do so in acts of violent retribution.

My big problem with this movie is that it’s a movie with an almost entirely female cast of characters but the fact that a man directed the movie keeps coming through loud and clear. Alena is one many movies that seems to base its teenage characters’ behaviour on other works of fiction rather that actual life experience. As someone who was a teenage girl, the teenage girls in this movie didn’t act like real life teens. They acted like a male filmmaker’s assumption of what teen girls are like. Especially when it came to how Alena gets bullied, I wanted a movie that actually had some insight into how girls bully and less repeating of the same assumptions that other movies have about how bullies work.

Also, Alena is a movie in which the director’s idea of alternative beauty or girls who don’t fit into the status quo is Alena, who has bleached eyebrows and later a bad haircut and Fabienne, who wears a hat. That’s pretty weak.

When it comes to the queerness in Alena, it’s all rather sad. Unlike Thelma, a similar but better movie, there’s never a moment where Alena comes to terms with herself and learns she can be happy in her identity. Instead, where there is queerness in Alena, there is tragedy. The scenes of Alena and Fabienne lightly flirting in the first two acts are rather cute but Alena’s feelings towards Fabienne and girls in general are still linked to her mental anguish and instability. This is also not a movie where the lesbian couple gets a genre-defying happy ending. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say Alena is homophobic or anything, I think a lot of WLW viewers will be put off by how much the lead character’s queerness ties into her mental instability and negative feelings about herself.

I will try and dance around giving away the third act twist of Alena but honestly, I’m not sure why I’m bothering. The movie itself makes the twist super obvious from moment one. Said twist is related to the mysterious Josefin. The revelation is obvious and over-done. On the plus side, being overdone as it is, it means I’ve seen much worse takes of this twist. At least there’s internal logic that still holds once the revelations about Josefin come to light. Mostly. I have some questions about the final fight scene between Alena and Josefin but I’ll allow it.

Ultimately, Alena is spooky and well-paced enough to be at least mildly successful as a horror movie. And even a mildly successful horror movie is a minority in that genre. Still, as much as I’ve seen worse movies than Alena, I’ve seen better ones too. I could name dozens of similar movies and it’s about a 50/50 split of being better and being worse. Overall as a movie, Alena is firmly middle of the pack.

Overall rating: 5.7/10

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