Bloomington

Based on the premise and tepid IMDB scored, I watched Bloomington and just waited for it to piss me off. That never came to pass. The ending credits rolled and I was just… fine with Bloomington.

Bloomington is about Jackie, a former child star who is now attending university. While there, she begins an affair with her womanizing teacher Catherine. The film follows Jackie’s coming of age. On her own and largely unsupervised for the first time, Jackie must learn what it means to be an adult. Additionally, Jackie is offered a new acting role which might take her from being a child star into a stable career as a grown actress.

Teacher/Student is a pretty common love story across the sexual spectrum. It’s never been my favourite because I tend to find creepy. A large part of why Bloomington worked for me is that it’s aware that this relationship is a bit creepy. There were scenes in the movie that made it clear that the significant age gap is a problem for this relationship. Additionally, it plays on the somewhat Freudian undertones of dating someone with such an age gap. For example, after Jackie’s mother acts like less than the ideal mother, she goes to Catherine. Catherine comforts her, giving her the affection her mother didn’t. Scenes like this make it clear that for Jackie and perhaps both of them, there is an element of surrogate motherhood. This is usually not a good foundation for a healthy relationship. But at least the movie’s aware of it. Acknowledging this undertone instead of avoiding it really helped me stay with this story and relationship.

Bloomington is also a movie where I can get onboard with the trope that the core, romantic relationship is a catalyst for growth. Ultimately, this is not a love story. It is a story about Jackie coming of age with a good part of that being tied into a romantic relationship. I think it really worked in this case because you don’t want this relationship to work long term. And it doesn’t. Despite having focus on the romantic relationship, I found that Bloomington never suggested to its audience that this relationship was the end-all, be-all or that we should be rooting for this couple long-term. I can be picky about this idea of relationships being used for character growth but in Bloomington’s case, it worked for me. Possibly because there is such a valid reason for these characters to not be together at the end of the story.

Bloomington is simply solid start to finish. I didn’t have any issues with it. The self-awareness of Bloomington and its core relationship was a real plus for me. Additionally, the amount of work the writer and director clearly put into developing these characters makes the relationship depicted in Bloomington feel like it means something even if it’s not the endgame for either of its participants. Frankly, Bloomington didn’t blow me away with how good it was or anything. But it is significantly better than I expected.

Overall rating: 5.7/10

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