"The Myth of the American Sleepover"

The Myth of the American Sleepover is a 2010 indie film now streaming in HD on Netflix Instant. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, Myth was filmed in and around the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. It eventually screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize at SXSW that year.

As a Detroit native, I knew I would have to get around to seeing this film eventually, so I was grateful when it ended up on Netflix back in December. The experience of watching Myth was entirely surreal: thanks to the Red One camera and the talents of cinematographer James Laxton (Medicine For Melancholy, For a Good Time, Call…), the suburbs of Southeastern Michigan are transformed into a golden-lit teenage utopia. Throughout the film, I kept saying to myself: I live here. This area doesn’t look nearly as beautiful as this.

The suburbs are killing us

But in Myth, Detroit does. Even if you’ve never set a foot in the mitten state, this movie should ring true with its down-to-earth tale of teenage longing and the pangs of first love. The story follows several teens of various ages, from around 14 to 18, as they try to make the last weekend of summer count. This is a quiet film in the sense that David Robert Mitchell doesn’t create drama for the sake of drama; there are no histrionics here.

Instead, relationships are explored through the subtlest of gestures: a glance of longing between two teens while shopping with their parents at the grocery store, an exchange that is edited down to the glacial pace that these kids must experience it as;

In the Mood For Love...and Groceries

a hand lingering next to a hand on the rim of a bathtub; a seductive look as a cigarette is shared.

The look

The characters’ closest kept secrets are revealed through pure accident. A photograph is stolen from a trophy case on a return visit to an old high school. A personal letter slips out from between the covers of a brother’s dirty magazines. A diary is carelessly left out during a sleepover; a girl reads it and learns that her host is a fellow rival for her boyfriend’s affection.

You had to sneak into my room just to read my diary

And yet none of these conflicts boil over into the predictable bout of tears or shouting matches you’d expect in so many other teen films. The characters are simply allowed to be, to exist and try to savor their last night of freedom as summer wanes. They are brought to life by a uniformly excellent cast of young, unprofessional actors from all over the state of Michigan. I expect big things from these kids if they decide to continue with acting.

"I'll tell you if there's a ghost behind you."

The Myth of the American Sleepover has been labeled the point where ‘mumblecore’ meets the teen movie. However, I would have to say David Robert Mitchell seems to draw as much inspiration from Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood For Love) and the French New Wave as he does anything else that is going on in American independent cinema right now. Granted, there is some room for improvement. I wish the script had an ear for authentic teen-speak to compliment its tale of adolescent longing, but sadly the dialogue is the only blemish on an otherwise superb film.

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David Robert Mitchell is currently gearing up to shoot his next film, Ella Walks the Beach, this summer with Haley Bennett (Gregg Araki’s Kaboom). Here’s the IMDB plot description:

A young woman breaks up with her boyfriend and runs away, spending a night and a day traveling along an iconic California beach, chatting with strangers, playing music, having adventures, and testing the waters of ‘being single’.

Which is most fitting, as Mitchell is particularly adept at capturing on film that elusive moment in life where one stands at the precipice of something new…at once nostalgic for an idealized past that may or may not have actually been experienced, and yet curiously aware that the dawn of a new day will bring something grander with it. Sometimes the most exciting moment to depict in art is simply that act of waiting for what comes next.