Filmmakers focus on high school truths in ‘Dare’
Posted November 15, 2009 at 6:43 pm in Film, Lifestyle
High school is about friends, feelings and finding your place in a teenage community, which feels like your entire world. Although stereotypes and reputations can predetermine that often undesirable place, Dare shows us that, by doing something you’re afraid of, you can find your way out.
In Dare, screenwriter David Brind and director Adam Salky bring the archetypical good girl, bad boy and loner to life in a way that many high school movies are not bold enough to do.
Dare devils · Zach Gilford (left) and Emmy Rossum star in the high school drama Dare, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. - Photo courtesy of Image Entertainment
As each of these high school seniors sets out to do something they’re afraid of — either because someone told them they needed to or simply because they can’t stand being trapped by their overbearing reputations — their worlds become intertwined in a way that reveals a teenage reality seldom seen on film.
Alexa (Emmy Rossum) is dying to break out of her overachieving, aspiring-actress shell, but doesn’t have the courage to do so until a successful yet pompous actor, Grant Matson (Alan Cumming), gives her a rude awakening by telling her she must have real-life experience before trying to portray an entire range of human emotion in her school play.
Although Alexa’s best friend, Ben (Ashley Springer), is more comfortable with his reputation as an outsider, he has an entirely different problem: He is gay, but can’t bring himself to admit it.
Both Alexa and Ben use Johnny (Zach Gilford), the bad boy that every girl seems to want, to try to solve their problems. But Johnny has his own set of insecurities that creates a love triangle so complicated that none of them seems to be able to find their way out.
Between a regrettable loss of virginity, a sexual encounter in a swimming pool between the two male leads and an intimate scene involving all three main characters, Dare is both surprising and uncomfortable — but in a very real way. It is this grittiness that sets the 2009 Sundance Film Festival selection apart from most other high school movies.
Split into three parts — each told subtly through the eyes of a different main character — Dare allows each of its characters to develop and be understood more thoroughly by viewers than even the characters understand themselves.
Rossum fits perfectly as Alexa, fulfilling the role of the aspiring actress flawlessly both before and after the good girl goes bad. Springer and Gilford also do justice to their characters, creating complex male protagonists who, as we find out throughout the film, have so much more than meets the eye.
On the periphery of the film’s primary storyline, Dare includes a number of other characters who give the film a humorous undertone. Sandra Bernhard as Dr. Serena Mohr, Johnny’s therapist, and Ana Gasteyer as Ruth Berger, Ben’s mom and a fellow therapist, use their psychoanalytical personalities in the film to bring to light the comedy and awkward adult-adolescent interaction that accompany the teenagers’ overdramatized problems.
As the film’s drama plays out from the different characters’ perspectives, Dare also creatively alters our view of their world. What starts off as a colorful setting filled with a diverse range of high school personalities turns into a dark jumble of ambiguous backdrops against teenage confusion. It is displayed in a way that anyone who has undergone all the painfully awkward new experiences high school has to offer can understand.
Dare is both familiar and unexpected, but it is, above all, honest. Although its ending is abrupt and without explanation — a tool not as effectively executed in this film as in some — it will leave you with an insatiable craving to know what happens next to Alexa, Ben and Johnny as they leave their high school personas behind and embark on adulthood — where they will finally be free to be whoever they want.
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This article is tagged: Adam Salky, Alan Cumming, Ashley Springer, dare, David Brind, Emmy Rossum, Zach Gilford
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