All the Weekend’s Drama
Reviewed by Mark Woodring
Typically, movies about young women experiencing things only young women can experience don’t fall into my viewing wheelhouse, so you can be sure that this one’s synopsis read to me like a film that I was simply going to be sitting through.
Turns out…
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
108 Minutes, Not Rated
Written and Directed by John Robb Saunders
Synopsis:
Chloe Rousseau is a misfit, gentle hearted twenty year-old. She’s hardly ever known anything outside of her wayward, poverty-stricken lifestyle. Surrounding her is nothing but trauma attached to young people who don’t deserve it. Her glimmers of hope: a well-adjusted, now estranged childhood best friend, Nina, a young sweetheart teenager named Benny, and a wise-beyond-her-years corner store clerk, Imara. After Chloe has an accidental pregnancy, she turns to Nina for support, to which Nina shows Chloe that no one should ever feel their destiny is predetermined, no matter where you come from.
… I was mistaken on that front.
Laken Giles (who gives me young Lindsay Lohan vibes, BTW) is Chloe, whose freewheeling lifestyle in LA consists almost exclusively of getting high with her friend Madison and getting laid by whoever’s around.
When the worst possible thing that could happen to her happens, she is forced to deal with things in a way she’s not used to: honestly.
As we learn Chloe’s backstory, we can relate more and more to her position and behavior. An orphan, whose mother was a hooker, Chloe grew up in the state foster system and now lives with a childhood friend, Nina, from before her mother died.
As Chloe navigates the increasingly untenable world she used to happily inhabit in an effort to make sense of the new world in which she finds herself, we see the effects of the foster system: children are forced to grow up fast, mostly bypassing those critical developmental stages so essential to becoming a functional adult.
The interplay between Chloe, Nina, and Benny, a 17-year old high schooler who has somehow found his way into their orbit, serves as the defacto famly unit of the film. When Benny finds himself getting into trouble with some of Chloe’s old friends, we see the good person Chloe is really come to the fore.
The film does a good job looking at the American economic system, foster system, drugs, abortion, and education, all through Chloe’s world and the drama she encounters (and often precipitates).
A solid drama from top to bottom, hamstrung a bit by some primitive dialog in service to the greater themes, All The Weekend’s Drama is an easy watch, though a harsh one. Perhaps that is the result of the film, focused almost exclusively on the lives and thoughts of women, being written and directed by a man.
All the Weekend’s Drama showed at Dances With Films and stars Laken Giles, Sharihan Haddad, Cady Mariano, Brett Cormier, Micah Flamm, Cristal Bella, and Alexis Figueroa.
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