Along for the Ride
A feel-good romcom dabbles in weighty issues with a light touch and bright performances.
The cycle of life: Belmont Cameli and Emma Pasarow
You can still smell the ink from the pages of Sarah Dessen’s 2009 novel. It just reeks of Young Adult Fiction, romantic aspirations and the warm, salty breeze blown off the spume of Carolina Beach. Sarah Dessen is a North Carolina native who graduated from Chapel Hill and has three titles Netflix-ready, with Along for the Ride the first out of the starting gate. The title itself is only really poignant once you’ve turned the last pages of Dessen’s book, as one of its major themes is the dereliction of duty of Auden’s father, Robert West. There’s also the spectre of grief and divorce stirred into the narrative pot, just to give all the bright smiles a semblance of depth.
Not surprisingly, Robert West (Dermot Mulroney) is a writer – who else would name their daughter Auden? Robert is now shacked up with the sunny beach-blonde Heidi (Kate Bosworth) and their new sprog, dubbed Thisbe (as in ‘Pyramus and…’). Recent high school graduate Auden (Emma Pasarow) comes to visit for the summer to help out at Heidi’s beach-side boutique, Clementine's, while the new mom attends to Thisbe’s every wailing need. As ever, Robert is walled up in his man cave dabbling with a deadline.
Being the daughter of a writer – and a ‘Mensa level’ academic (Andie MacDowell) – Auden is a bookish type who has missed out on some of the more trivial pursuits of childhood. Consequently, she has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way and never really fits in with her own peer group. But she means well and has the enviable endowment of being both the hottest and the coolest new girl in town. The town is Colby, a provincial backwater on the water where everybody knows everybody – and Auden’s apparent aloofness quickly becomes common knowledge. But there’s another outsider on the beach front, the handsome Eli (Belmont Cameli), who performs endless wheelies on the pier, just within Auden’s peripheral vision (as she sits consuming yet another chapter of her Life of Colette). Cycling is his passion – and her embarrassment. And so we have two past lives aching to be entangled and to be resolved.
Along for the Ride is as formulaic as NeuroPro but it would be a crime if it skidded off track. The film marks the directorial debut of the scenarist Sofia Alvarez – and she knows how to mount a movie. She has charmed priceless performances from her young cast, all of whom delivers in her or his own way. As Auden, Emma Pasarow cuts a striking presence, while the three actresses who play her colleagues at Clementine's (Laura Kariuki, Genevieve Hannelius, Samia Finnerty) are all sublime. There’s also a great soundtrack (Sean Paul, Mark Knopfler, Girls, Santigold) and a script that’s not unfamiliar with the way teenagers speak. It’s timely, too, to have Auden and Eli discuss the niche appeal of Jane Campion. The film may not be custom-made for Sundance or Telluride, but it’s smart enough and even affecting at times, promising great things for Pasarow. Its sense of expectation may be weightier than its emotional pay-off, but it is nowhere near as cheesy as many a cult classic cut from the same cloth.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Emma Pasarow, Belmont Cameli, Kate Bosworth, Dermot Mulroney, Andie MacDowell, Laura Kariuki, Marcus Scribner, Genevieve Hannelius, Samia Finnerty, Ricardo Hurtado, Paul Karmiryan, Alisa Harris.
Dir Sofia Alvarez, Pro Bryan Unkeless and Eric Newman, Screenplay Sofia Alvarez, Ph Luca Del Puppo, Pro Des Celine Diano, Ed Justin Chan, Music Beach House, Costumes Brenda Abbandandolo.
Screen Arcade-Netflix.
107 mins. USA. 2022. Rel: 6 May 2022. Cert. 12.
