"I suppose it won't matter when I'm 38, but I'm upset about it."

 I recently caved and saw the film Submarine (2010), and it did not disappoint.

I was hesitant to see it because  of being told that the main love interest "look[ed] like [me]" and the young male protagonist lying about having Cotard's syndrome. Generally uttered in the same breath and movies I very much avoided, such as Garden State and Elizabethtown, it seemed to have very few selling points for me.

However, after finding out who the director was and knowing that it was set in Wales, I finally caved.

And I am very much happy that I did.

Submarine is the story of  an insufferable teen named Oliver Tate living in Wales in the late 1980s. He is, by all accounts, not a very good person, and treats everyone in his life as a character in his little fantasy world he projects onto. When the people in his life display agency, his fantasies start to crumble, and he has to reckon with his bad behaviour.

This film is charming, funny, and heartfelt. It is warm and witty. Jordanna, his love interest, is darling. Sally Hawkins as the mother is absolutely endearing and charming. It's a well-cast, superbly acted, aesthetically pleasing film. It borrows some homages to Wes Anderson (whom I figured out I cannot sit through a single film of all the way through) without being cloying or cliché, and sidesteps a lot of the creepy prurient elements found in, let's say, Moonrise Kingdom. (also like Moonrise Kingdom, this film does have a dead dog, but it's off-screen, and only mentioned.)

Aesthetically, this film is very pleasing to me.  It is a cozy and nostalgic film. There is something refreshing about the period and the place it is set. I like that the teens dress like teens. I like the lack of cell phones and computers (proving that we've never been able to communicate and we can't really blame cell phones). Everything about this film is worn in and homey.

There is a scene that really struck me, when Oliver and Jordanna go to the cinema, and Oliver assigns her books for her to read so that she can be more like him. She says to him, "why would I want to be more like you?" So often, this has been me, where people did not treat me like a real person, but a fantasy, and people would get frustrated with me because I was a real human being with agency. (It's also funny to me because every single book his lists for her is on my "red flag, you in danger girl, GET OUT NOW/ RUN" list.)

All in all, I think this film does what a lot of other films of a similar ilk think they were doing, or tried to do and failed. It's well worth the watch. It's my new comfort film.

Yes, and everyone was right about  me and Jordanna after all. Ha.I also want that tiger sweatshirt.