Wasted on the Young
MA15+, 97mins
Directed by Ben C. Lucas
Wasted on the Young is quite a different kind of film for Australia at the moment. It’s a slickly produced look at the disintegrating moral compass of today’s youth, produced with an edge that audiences should respond to.
Set in a privileged suburb of Perth in a world where adults are non-existent, much like homework it would seem, and rich children have the lay of the land. Any moment spent outside the walls of their space-age private school is occupied by scheming on how to spend their weekends, where they can get their next drug stash and how much booze they can stomach in between making fun of nerds and geeks. Sure, it’s a grossly exaggerated version of modern day high school, but Ben C Lucas’ off-centre thriller gets much more right as it does glaringly wrong.
Oliver Ackland (The Proposition) stars as Darren, the quiet stepbrother of acting newcomer Alex Russell’s outward rich kid Zack. Darren is attracted to Xandrie, played by Adelaide Clemens (Love My Way), a girl who hangs on the fringes of the school’s social hierarchy; neither popular enough to be in with the cool crowd, but not so much of an outcast as to not get invited to all the big parties. It’s at one of these strobe light fests where ‘something’ horrible goes wrong, leading the characters down an never-ending rabbit hole of disturbed behaviour as they struggle to keep their heads above water.
Wasted on the Young’s pulsating soundtrack, immediate direction by first time filmmaker Lucas (read Onya’s interview with Lucas here) and Leanne Cole’s hectic editing all lend the film a vibrancy that is sorely lacking in a lot of cinema these days. Unfortunately, Lucas – who also wrote the screenplay – can’t keep the leash on his inspired pandemonium for the entire running time and it spirals out of control. The film’s climax revolves around a robot! I’m not sure what on Earth that was all about.
Still, there’s a lot to take in during the early passages of the film as Lucas allows his audience to discover this teenage world where adults are never seen. He utilises modern day technology to its fullest advantages and creates a scenario where the weight of the world hangs on one’s ability to decipher messages that r tipd lk dis 4ril omglol. I considered writing this entire review in “text speak” and got a headache after one line, I’m not sure how “the kids” do it!
If Wasted on the Young loses its grip in its later passages then praise should still go to Ackland and Clemens, who are given the task of the film’s most multi-dimensional characters and manoeuvre their ways through the flashy cinematography and editing with aplomb. Lucas obviously has skill behind the camera, and his handling of the central mystery is fascinating. He surely has a very interesting career ahead of him.
If young Australian audiences feel the local industry doesn’t make enough films aimed at them then Wasted on the Young should remedy that somewhat. It taps into a very youth-specific demographic, but adults will surely find a lot to muse over about its tricky politics and moral debates. To be reductive, it’s like Easy A as written by Bret Easton Ellis with a segue through Gus Van Sant’s masterful Elephant and it’s this radical prospect that make the film easier to champion than its latter half silliness would suggest.
Wasted on the Young is screening nationally now.
