Since sexual assault is in the news, I thought I'd mention "Eighth Grade."
It's a small movie that isn't on anyone's public Top 10 list, but it's one of the most interesting films I've seen this year. It's a week in the life of a 13-year-old girl, her fellow classmates and a single dad who has fathered her since her mother left shortly after her birth.
Two incidents in the film involve sexual assaults of a middle-school nature. Nothing physical, but assaults just the same. Just boys acting like far too many men act these days, if the news is any indication.
Those incidents were not primary features of this interesting movie, but such incidents are part of many young girls' lives. The main character handled them just fine, and had the help of her somewhat bumbling father in dealing with one of them. For me, the fact that girls that age are introduced to boys acting like offensive men, though, was striking.
"Eighth Grade" is worth seeing. The actor who plays the main character is just 14 years old, herself, and is on-screen throughout. She carried off the role with innocent aplomb, I think. It's well-directed, and sensitively, for a first film by the director, and is guaranteed to remind everyone who lived through that period of life of the hazards of middle school.
I recommend it, as an object lesson of how little things have changed for all those kids going through that tumultuous age. Also as a demonstration of the survival skills most of us developed during our own middle-school years. Parents of middle-school boys could easily use the film as a teaching moment for their sons, I think, too.
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I remember it very well. About halfway through the school year, I started getting taller really, really fast. My voice broke constantly, and my clothes never really fit. The next year was chaotic, although I weathered it OK. Still, it wasn't until the summer after 9th grade that I found my footing again, stopped tripping over my own feet, and accepted the new body I had somehow grown into.
For a year, though, and a little more, I was completely unsure of anything at all. This movie was a reminder of just how unsettling puberty is for kids. It's a miracle we manage to get through it intact.
