52 Films by Women Vol 8. 12. Bottoms (Director: Emma Seligman)
There is a school of
thought that a film writer-director follows a critical and modest box office
hit with a literary adaptation. It worked for Greta Gerwig with Little Women. There is a further school of thought that
you follow it up with a tale of two childhood lesbian best friends who start a
high school fight club to get laid. Wait, what? No one really had Bottoms, co-writer-director Emma Seligman’s follow up to Shiva Baby, on their bingo card, because who plays
bingo anyway since the pandemic? At any rate, Seligman’s reunion with
co-writer-star Rachel Sennott, puts one in mind of Gerwig’s reteaming with Saoirse
Ronan – except that Ronan didn’t get punched in the face as one of the March
sisters, which would have made for a very radical adaptation of Louisa May
Alcott’s beloved novel, and not, in my humble opinion, a successful one.
The title, Bottoms, isn’t explained – it actually doesn’t appear until the end of the film
– but if I had to guess it has something to do with besties PJ (Sennott) and
Josie (Ayo Edebiri) being at the bottom of the school’s popularity chain.
Except there is this goth (Toby Nichols) who sits on his own and plans to blow
up the school. He has the last line - ‘hey, that’s my thing’ – which, as last
lines go, is almost up there with ‘nobody’s perfect’.
Seligman’s film,
which recouped its $11.3 million production budget (gross to date $13.6
million) at the box office before ending up on Amazon Prime, is a heightened,
semi-cartoon high school movie about losers who become winners, which is all
audiences ever want from the genre. At its heart, it is about how very
unsavoury behaviours are justified in the name of sporting rivalries. If
students from a rival high school were responsible for a series of intimidating
assaults and nasty injuries, surely the sporting fixture that inspired this
activity would be outlawed. Only it isn’t. The rivalry is excused in terms of
commerce. In this context, what passes for normal really deserves a second
look. Sennott and Seligman dismiss it with the contempt it deserves. I’m not
sure they even like sports.
Rather, they employ
a very familiar trope from high school movies. The person who is most suitable
for the protagonist is not the beautiful, hard to charm woman, who exists on a
different plane or at least socio-economic bracket, rather the woman right in
front of you, who is smart, self-effacing but has more answers than you ever
will. Not that she encourages you to cheat on your test. For Sennott’s driven,
over-optimistic ‘this is the school year in which everything will change’ PJ
this is Hazel (Ruby Cruz) who at the school fair is keen to be noticed. PJ
appears to have the self-confidence that Hazel lacks, but of course is in love
with Brittany (Kaia Gerber), a tall cheerleader, who appears to have no
personality, except she is a successful businesswoman who makes her own
jewellery - and no one ever talks about that.
Josie, who wears a
necklace with her own name on it, is love with Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). ‘I’m
playing the long game,’ she explains to PJ, imaging that they’ll get together
at their twenty-year high school reunion. As Josie is speaking, she tries on three
baseball caps – one on top of the other. ‘What are you doing?’ PJ asks
understandably.
Josie has her arm in
a sling. She tripped, but this explanation is skewed by misunderstandings,
namely that she spent the summer with PJ in juvenile hall; Hazel spent the
summer at a farm, so anything is possible. This is fuelled by two unspoken
assumptions: that of course two openly gay teenagers who end up in juvenile
hall, especially Josie owing to her ethnicity. This is another indication of
high schoolers’ warped state of normality. A myth is fuelled – that PJ and
Josie had to fight to survive. Learning that a local student was assaulted by
members of a rival high school and having contributed to an injury to Isabel’s
unfaithful quarterback boyfriend, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), PJ and Josie form
a self-defence club that is their means of getting closer to the school’s most beautiful
students.
The problem of
starting a fight club is that one has to get hit in the face. PJ takes the
first punch, but it becomes clear that blood is going to be spilt. The film’s
make-up budget is very obviously on the screen.
Seligman stages the self-defence training scenes to make us wince rather than ‘enjoy’ the violence. In a boxing film, the audience is made to identify with one of the pugilists and gets a kick from their eventual victory, as if they too had thrown punches at the antagonists. In Bottoms, the fight scenes have no charge. Instead, they reach levels of absurdity.
One of the delights
of the film is that every department – make-up, set and costume design –
contributes to the comedy, be it the absurdity of all of the members of
Rockbridge Falls’ football team, the Vikings, attending lessons in their
uniforms, a visual reminder that they are all jocks, to the clutter in Josie’s
bedroom that she is very eager to hide when she has a guest, to the writing on
the blackboard, including the ‘assignment’, ‘why all Presidents are men – and
why it should stay that way’. Throwaway gags include an announcement over the
school’s Tannoy system that the library is closed and there will be no reading
this year. A running joke involves the school’s caretaker cleaning graffiti
from PJ’s and Josie’s lockers. ‘Hey, why am I ‘freak number two’?’ asks PJ.
‘I’m not the sidekick.’
The film’s
heightened absurdity extends to an early scene in which PJ and Josie offer
Isabel a safety ride and drive the car towards Jeff. Jeff falls down as if hit
even though the car doesn’t touch him and is next seen on crutches. Jeff’s
teammates rush to his aid, sliding on the bonnets of parked cars. The ‘action’
is exaggerated. However, the film is anchored by something real – PJ and
Josie’s expectations that their desires won’t be realised. The two friends are
fundamentally relatable.
Seligman encourages
her cast to improvise, evident in the performance of American running back
turned actor Marshawn Lynch as teacher Mr G, perhaps the auspicious transformation
of sports star to actor since Mr T. Mr G has no interest in teaching, being
preoccupied by his own divorce. He is distracted enough to be the
teacher-sponsor of the women’s self defence club, even though he draws the line
of students pushing each other to the floor.
Sennott and Edebiri
are a good double act, mirrored by Galatzine and Jeff’s ‘number two’, Tim
(Miles Fowler), who is determined to put an end to the fight club. The
inference is that Tim loves Jeff and will do anything to protect him, including
questioning the school’s fruit salad. ‘No pineapple!’ he yells, referring to
Jeff’s allergy, which provides a pivotal detail in the film’s climax. (How does
Huntingdon know Jeff has an allergy? Never mind.)
Some of the humour
threatens to cross a line. One of the students (Summer Joy Campbell), naturally
wearing a beanie with a logo featuring an alien head, wants to kill her
stepfather in retribution for Friday night ‘movie nights’ – ‘I mean, I know
he’s my mom’s new husband and all,’ she drifts. In another scene, PJ asks the
club to raise their hand if they’ve been raped. No response. ‘Grey area.’ Hands
are raised. This is a film that acknowledges the constant threat of violence
that women face but isn’t afraid to make it a source of catharsis. At the same
time, she presents the serially unfaithful Jeff as absurd, in a sequence set to
Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, in which his house is egged, and
car blown up in retribution for cheating on Isabel with Hazel’s mother (Dagmara
Dominczyk) – Jeff fails to notice until the girls’ van speeds away. (Where did
they get a van from anyway?)
The film climaxes
with the much-feared football match, which, it won’t surprise you to learn,
contains no football whatsoever. In the lead up, Punkie Johnson cameos as
Josie’s ‘not your gay Yoda’, who, in her improvised scenes, asks, ‘how old are
you anyway? I put alcohol in that.’ Details like the wiggly straws put in the
milkshakes served to Josie and Isabel offer constant delights, including the
football-themed religious mural behind Jeff’s lunch table.
Like many high
school movies, adults barely feature – certainly no parents aside from Hazel’s
mother. High school movies reflect the students’ psyche – that only what goes
on in school is important and gives life meaning, which is what students are
taught to believe but is patently untrue.
While Bottoms did not achieve a Mean
Girls level of success at the
box office it has already been embraced as a modern cult classic, playing to
sell-out screenings in London, if not in Wakefield, Yorkshire, where I saw the
film twice – once with free nachos, so not all bad. The film was produced by
Elizabeth Banks and her husband Max Handelman who clearly get Seligman’s black
humour, even if doesn’t reach Cocaine
Bear levels of audience
appreciation; Banks directed the latter. It is enhanced by a soundtrack by
Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg, with a stadium anthem-like end credit tune.
Reviewed at
Cineworld Wakefield, Yorkshire, Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th November 2023;
Amazon Prime, Sunday 31st March 2024
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