Sweetness film captures teen indie sleaze with teeth
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Sweetness image still courtesy of elevation pictures.
Every time there’s a new horror, thriller or vaguely suspenseful movie out in theatres, my roommate Aya and I trek to the Metrotown Cineplex to watch it. I buy the tickets, she buys the drinks (pineapple Fanta for her, a lime Diet Coke for me), and for 90 odd minutes we escape into worlds of camp, gore, chaos or whatever else that week’s feature has to offer.
This tradition started when we were way too young to watch horror movies, peeking out from behind pillows on the couch while The Ring (2002) played on the TV, and has gone on for nearly two decades. Last week, we headed to the theatre together again. Only this time, Aya wasn’t just sitting beside me—she was on screen.
Aya Furukawa, a Vancouver actor who also happens to be my best friend, stars alongside Kate Hallett and Herman Tømmeraas in the new Canadian indie thriller Sweetness, the debut feature from writer-director Emma Higgins. The film follows angsty teen Rylee (Hallett) on a misguided mission to save her rock star idol Payton Adler (Tømmeraas) from his addiction.
Aya plays Sidney, Rylee’s slightly older, more rebellious, mini-skirt-wearing best friend. “It means a lot to me to be part of a movie that feels like it’s meant for an audience I’m a part of,” Aya tells me. “Especially one that reflects my own childhood.” Sweetness is a movie for fangirls, emo kids and underdogs, with a story ripped straight from the dark side of Wattpad (complimentary) that reflects a period of fan culture Aya and I both came of age during.
Having previously directed music videos for artists like Jessie Reyez, Teagan & Sara and Mother Mother, Higgins’ background in music is clear throughout the film’s stylish concert sequences, rhythmic cuts and catchy original songs. Higgins says she took inspiration from her time coming up in the Vancouver music scene, where she found herself on her first music video set at just 16 after responding to a Craigslist ad looking for background actors. Since then, she’s worked on hundreds of videos. “If there was a musician in Vancouver, between the years of like 2008 and 2014, I worked with them,” she says.
aya furukawa, image courtesy of phoebe fuller.
Sweetness takes heavy inspiration from that era, including Canadian bands like Marianas Trench, which inspired the film’s fictional band Floorplan. “We were partying in basements in East Van, smoking cigarettes inside, watching Mac DeMarco, or White Lung, or these bands that went on to do all these things, but were playing in these tiny, tiny little basements,” says Higgins. “And we all wore headbands for some reason.”
The film’s release was well-timed with the current indie sleaze revival, but while the film captures that distinctly early 2010s aesthetic, it also remains intentionally timeless. Characters use smartphones, but for a story about stan culture, there’s a refreshing lack of social media, cleverly avoiding references that could date the film. Instead, the story remains grounded in a suburban reality that feels as benign as it does dread-inducing.
Higgins also took inspiration from her own suburban upbringing in South Burnaby, telling a story that seeks to capture the feeling of her teen years and speak to the teenage experience. “We overlook teens a lot,” she says. “That’s part of the thing that really gets me, is that we degrade what they like.”
Sweetness captures how the horrors of teenage girlhood are softened by the catharsis of obsessive parasocial fandom. It’s a sharp tale of female rage and hopeless romance, perfectly tuned to former emo kids and current genre lovers. Most importantly, it’s a ton of fun to watch in a theatre. And I’m totally not biased.
You can watch Sweetness in theatres now.
Phoebe Fuller is a journalist, researcher and labour consultant based in Vancouver, BC. She likes writing about LGBTQ2S+ stories, labour issues and all things screens. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Georgia Straight, and the Tyee, among others. She is one of the current web editors for SAD Mag and curator of the weekly events newsletter, Mood Swing.
