I Believe in Unicorns, Do You?
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I Believe in Unicorns, Do You?
[title type="subtitle-h6" color=""]Colten Parr[/title] A powerful film produces personal resonance. It has emotional poignancy, cultural pertinence, and perhaps provokes one intellectually. Rarely have I watched such a movie and said, “I connect with this. I have experienced this.” Even more rarely have I watched a movie and said, “I connect with this. But I have not experienced this.”Days after I watched I Believe in Unicorns on Netflix, I found out the WUD Film Committee would be screening it at the Marquee Film Festival, followed by a Q&A session with the director. In a brief readers-digest summary, the film tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl—a coming-of-age drama depicting her first love and heartbreak. But I cannot reduce the film, what seems like a slice of real life, into a single lined synopsis.What impressed me? Unlike many Hollywood films, I Believe in Unicorns claims its stake in the representation of reality rather than the production of entertainment—even in its opening moments. It begins with a sequence of old home films interrupted by a gasp— “There’s so much I wanna say. But I don’t know where to start.” The clips give the protagonist context and history, as if to say this story started sometime a long time ago, but its opening line suggests a future point of reference that wistfully recollects what will soon unfold. It pushes beyond the cinematic trope of linearity: nobody can remember where their own story started, and nobody can escape looking back at it. Davina is no different.
One opening scene dramatizes this division between realism and entertainment. Describing a class project, one of Davina’s teachers explains, “a self portrait should be raw, should be naked…I want you guys to do a self-portrait. I wanna see who you are under the baggy clothes, the piercings, the makeup.” The movie demonstrates a self-awareness of this distinction between a person’s essence and their performance, and seeks to depict a “naked” narrative: a piece of reality, not cinematic fiction. However, just because the film values realism over creating entertainment does not mean it isn’t entertaining. It shines most in its mundane moments: Davina puts socks on her disabled mom’s feet, tells a friend how well her boyfriend kisses, wobbles around in the roller-skating rink. These moments don’t advance the plot but glimpse into the characters’ ordinary existence. It shows, it doesn’t comment. It’s so simple it enthralls. Nothing in life is clear cut, nothing is black and white, nothing makes sense while it’s happening to us. And that’s the point. “I Believe in Unicorns” offers no pretense or promise of understanding nor finishes with a contained or clear cut conclusion. Instead, it depicts life’s gray spaces, and that’s precisely where its power lies.I Believe in Unicorns is a film that invites re-watching. Not only are its aesthetics beautiful (it looks like it’s shot through a VSCO filter and the score is fantastic), the movie is exceedingly complex and well-crafted. Its jarring and evocative realism will conjure memories of spectators’ own adolescent experiences particularly regarding relationships and sexuality. Davina’s first sexual encounter demonstrates how consent becomes complicated in the intersection of love and abuse. A same sex kiss depicts sexual fluidity. As the sole caretaker of her disabled mother, Davina navigates the challenges of her mother’s disability during a time she craves total independence. She bickers, she broods, she bypasses the “manic pixie dream girl” archetype as a young, complex, autonomous woman.I was privileged to hear the director, Leah Meyerhoff, speak about her film afterwards. Growing up, Meyerhoff had no counterpart onscreen—few teen girls played lead roles, few girls in lead roles were played by actresses of equal age, and few onscreen girls had the rich, complicated, imaginative inner life that she wished to portray in I Believe in Unicorns. Meyerhoff addressed this issue of representation in media and explained her work within the industry to further empower women in a field where few women work. I sat with my stomach in my chest while Meyerhoff humbly laughed, answered questions, and took a selfie with the audience. We held our index fingers to our foreheads like unicorns—a silly but meaningful commemoration of the very first public screening of her very first film.
Interestingly enough, the real feel of the movie comes about through short and surreal stop-motion sequences. Interstices of imagination: one moment the protagonist has sex for the first time, and the next she stands in a field, barefooted, alone, a bouquet a balloons in hand. Although they seem bizarre, the clips are cleverly and strategically interspersed throughout the film to regulate its pace and reinforce its metaphors through visual motifs. The interjections depict the protagonist’s retreat into her imagination to cope with life. In combination with the audio which deviates from what’s occurring on screen, the disjunction produces discomfort as it reflects the protagonist’s own unsettled and unstable state.One sequence demonstrates the effect of the magical sequences particularly well. Accompanied by an entire minute of the couple jumping and laughing in slow motion, the protagonist speaks softly and slowly in rich metaphor, responding to the one (she thinks) she loves.“I could tame you, break you.”“Not a chance.”“I will spread my wings, and smother you with a million tiny feathers.”“I’ll light your feathers on fire and watch them turn to ash.”“I will sweep the ashes into my hands, and sprinkle them in the ocean.”“I’ll build a raft and sail towards the distant horizon.”“I will summon the winds and overtake your raft with giant waves.”“I’ll sink to the ocean floor.”The content of the voice-over reflects the content of the plot. Each explores the capacity of a relationship to transform from something innocent into something toxic—a transformation made complicated by the attraction of companionship and the compulsion of infatuation.The end result is an incredibly relatable and moving piece of film-making. I reiterate, I Believe in Unicorns feels real, not fictional. Stories come to a close, but life goes on (with more complication.) As the protagonist pointedly observes, her story does not end but continues too, in complication: “Welcome to the future. It’s just like the present—but more fucked up.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]