Sweetheart

A self-conscious teenager finds herself on an excruciating staycation in Marley Morrison’s debut coming-of-age dramedy.

This feature film debut by Marley Morrison means a great deal to her on a personal level so it is surprising that it is the incidentals rather than the main theme that play best. The highly engaging opening scenes are reminiscent of that very appealing British film Days of the Bagnold Summer (2019) and, indeed, certain aspects of Morrison’s story (she is writer as well as director) can be thought of as an inversion of that film. In the earlier piece a disgruntled teenager was denied a visit to America to see his father and had to suffer a summer at home with his mother instead; in Sweetheart an equally caustic teen, the 17-year-old AJ (Nell Barlow), does take a trip, but it is a reluctant one to a holiday park in Dorset in the company of her mother, Tina (Jo Hartley). Consequently, she is no happier than the boy in Days of the Bagnold Summer.  AJ is the sour narrator of her own story and both the comments she makes in voice-over and her dialogue exchanges with her mother and her older sister, Lucy (Sophia Di Martino), set a humorous tone that works really well. The two films also share the ability to be comic without sacrificing an underlying conviction that makes the characters feel real.

Other members of the family sharing this holiday are AJ’s younger sister, the 8-year-old Dayna (Tabitha Byron) and Lucy’s partner Steve (Samuel Anderson). With the absent father portrayed as somebody who let Tina down badly, it is a pleasing balance to find Steve coming across as a caring, sensitive male. Furthermore, a scene with a banal stage magician (William Andrews) illustrates just how adept the comic writing is: it is all the more amusing for not being exaggerated. There’s pleasure too in the all-round quality of the performances in what is an extremely well-cast film.

But, while all these aspects are extremely well done, they are not the core of the film since that lies in AJ’s situation as a lesbian teenager hesitantly approaching a real relationship for the first time with the more assured Isla (Ella-Rae Smith). The latter is a local lifeguard on pool duty encountered soon after AJ’s arrival in Dorset. Morrison has specifically said that she wanted to make a film which would appeal to young lesbians and make them feel hopeful about what lay ahead for them. She contributes to this aim by giving AJ a family who know that she is gay and are fully supportive, even if in Tina’s case some of her ideas about lesbian lifestyles are hardly up-to-date. All this is fine but, while the surrounding material works well, the love story of AJ and Isla comes complete with ups and downs that feel formulaic through no fault of the players. It adds to the sense of undue familiarity that the soundtrack is made to incorporate a number of songs as background. Although these elements render the film’s centre passable rather than showing the filmmaker at her best, Sweetheart has found strong support from festival audiences and has won awards in both Glasgow and Toronto thus proving that for many Morrison has achieved her aim. Even if you share my reservations, the film still counts as a promising start for her in features: it’s just ironic that, in my eyes at least, its best scenes fall outside the love story even though it was that which inspired Morrison to make the film in the first place.

Watch the trailer

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Nell Barlow, Jo Hartley, Ella-Rae Smith, Sophia Di Martino, Samuel Anderson, Tabitha Byron, Steffan Cennydd, William Andrews, Spike Fearn, Anna Antoniades, Celeste De Venzey, Davey Hunter Jones.

Dir Marley Morrison, Pro Michelle Antoniades, Screenplay Marley Morrison, Ph Matt Wicks and Emily Almond Barr, Pro Des Carys Beard, Ed Keelan Gumbley, Music Toydrum, Costumes Amy Thompson.

BBC Films/Bohemia Media/BFI/Hazey Jane Films-Peccadillo Pictures.
103 mins. UK. 2021. Rel: 24 September 2021. Cert. 15.