52 Films by Women Vol 8. 19. My Old Ass (Director: Megan Park)

 

Pictured: Elliott (Missy Stella, left) meets her older self (Aubrey Plaza) in the comedy-drama, 'My Old Ass', written and directed by Megan Park. Photo: Shane Mahood. Courtesy of Sundance Institute / Amazon MGM

If you could go back in time and give your younger self some advice, what would you tell them? Don’t talk to strangers, obviously. Writer-director Megan Park explores this question in her second feature, the humorous and gently moving ‘coming of sage’ movie, My Old Ass, in which eighteen-year-old soon to be University of Toronto undergraduate, Elliott (Maisy Stella) encounters her thirty-nine-year-old wiser and more saggy self (Aubrey Plaza) after taking some shrooms of dubious provenance - could be South American, could be African, could be poisonous as fudge.

Elliott is spending summer with her cranberry-farming parents (Maria Dizzia, Al Goulem) and two brothers in whose business she takes zero interest. As her friends Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) remind her, she doesn’t want to stay in a community of three hundred people, although her local hangout sells drip coffee at $2.50 a cup which sounds close to Nirvana in this crazy world. Elliott may have a boating licence, but steering her friends across the lake, she is cavalier with their safety, ramming the pier. She is love with Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera) with whom she has frantic find-a-wall sex. She takes people for granted – while she’s scratching the boat (not a euphemism) her family is at home with the birthday cake that her youngest brother, Spencer (Carter Trozzolo) decorated for her. ‘It looks like a sheep,’ observes older brother, Max (Seth Isaac Johnson), as the blue frosted picture begins to melt. When Mom calls, Elliott doesn’t answer her phone, which may endear her to anyone in the audience under thirty, but not so much to us grey people.

Elliott and her friends speed to an island where they set up a tent and campfire, warm up and chug the shrooms. The effect isn’t instantaneous, but then Ro starts dancing, Ruthie falls off a log and Elliott comes face to face with herself.

 ‘You don’t look like me – you have a gap between your teeth,’ complains younger Elliott, after her initial response of ‘where the heck did you come from?’ gives way to the second stage of ‘this cannot be happening to me’. The older Elliott reveals her scars and where they came from. ‘You have one boob bigger than the other, but you’ll get used to it,’ Elliott tells her, adding, ‘Only girls notice.’ Younger Elliott wants to know what the next Apple is so she can invest and become super rich – she doesn’t want to go to university that much. Older self is reluctant to impart such information, though we later learn that the Canada of the future has a salmon shortage, couples aren’t allowed to have as many as three children, and that older Elliott is studying for a PhD. (‘I won’t tell you in what. That would spoil the surprise.’) Young Elliott overlooks such details. She wants to know what she shouldn’t do. ‘You should spend more time with your mom,’ older self tells her. ‘She’s kind of cool.’ ‘Oh my God, you look like my mother,’ young Elliott exclaims. ‘Yes, women turn into their mothers, but that isn’t a bad thing.’ Young Elliott continues to press, until her older self tells her to avoid someone called Chad. ‘Chad? Is that short for something?’ young Elliott asks.

While old Elliott hugs her younger, ever more drowsy self, she uses the opportunity to key her telephone number into younger Elliott’s phone. The next morning, young Elliott is still sleeping whilst her friends pack up the tent, which is another way of illustrating how she dodges her responsibilities. When she awakens, she doesn’t account for her experience. What happens in Shroom Club stays, etc.

Being a fan of Plaza’s dry sense of humour and not so much of an enthusiast of teen comedy, I was disappointed by her subsequent disappearance from the movie. Elliott doesn’t know anyone called Chad until she encounters a young man (Percy Hynes White) while she is out skinny-dipping. He comes up out of the water as if having held her breath for the longest time. ‘I’m naked, don’t look at me,’ Elliott tells him. She then wrestles with some kind of water snake, which he locates and brings to the surface, revealing it to be some underwater foliage. When he tells her his name, she is shocked.

Chad is working for Elliott’s father. His grandfather once ran the cranberry farm next to Elliott’s. As her father later tells Elliott, ‘Your grandfather and Chad’s grandfather once knew each other’. ‘Does that mean we’re cousins?’ Elliott asks in alarm. Elliott does her best to avoid Chad which, in time-honoured romantic comedy tradition, means they spend more time together, including on a boat trip together.

Nevertheless, Elliott starts to heed some of her older self’s other advice, asking her mother, ‘how was your day?’ and playing golf with Max. ‘I thought you were embarrassed to be seen with me,’ says Max, not afraid to detonate a truth bomb. ‘That’s true,’ replies Elliott. ‘I thought you were embarrassed to be seen with me,’ she tells him. ‘That’s true.’ As brother and sister bond, Elliott learns that her parents are going to sell the cranberry farm. ‘But you were going to take it over,’ Elliott tells Max. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ ‘I tried several times, but you were already out of here.’

In between following her dream, Elliott wants a place to come back to, which I guess is something all adult children want. However, regardless of your generation, life does not stand still.

Can Elliott resist the super geeky, super charming Chad, who at one point joins her family for breakfast? Cue Elliott biting the end off a sausage as if to signal displeasure; you can tell a lot about how a person feels by the way they eat their sausage. At one point, Chad and Elliott are in a boat approaching a low bridge, which prompts Chad to fall on top of Elliott and kiss her, an act for which he quickly apologises. ‘I’ve never had dick sex,’ Elliott later reveals, as if the subject would come up naturally.

Meanwhile, Elliott finds her older self’s number in her phone, typed in as ‘My Old Ass’. She answers. Neither knows how this is possible – they must have fantastic call plans in the future. Older Elliott overhears Chad. ‘Oh my God,’ she exclaims, ‘Is that Chad? Stay away from him.’

By the end of the film, younger Elliott imparts some wisdom to her older self. There is a genuinely tear-jerking scene between three actors. We don’t want Elliott’s parents to sell the farm, either.

Elliott’s younger brother Spencer has a crush on an actress she can’t pronounce. ‘Saoirse Ronan,’ says Chad. ‘How do you know that?’ Elliott asks. ‘Have you seen Little Women’?’ Cue a clip. My Old Ass was produced by Lucky Chap, Margot Robbie’s company, also responsible for Barbie and we appreciate the connection. There’s a punchline. Assumed to be halfway to Toronto, Elliott discovers the wall of her bedroom plastered with pictures of Saoirse. ‘I’m not sleeping here again!’ she cries, though she also helps Spencer add another photograph to the collection. In the meantime, Elliott funds a buyer for her boat, only the engine falls into the bottom of the lake. ‘What are we going to do?’ Elliott asks her companion.

The nub of the film is Elliott’s fluid sexuality. ‘Am I bi or pan?’ Elliott asks. We expect Chelsea to resent Elliott falling for a boy, but she doesn’t feel offended. Otherwise Elliott’s sexuality is entirely unproblematic - though the symbolism of the lake is somewhat obvious.

By the end, Elliott rushes to Ro’s house to take the last of the shrooms. By this time, older Elliott hasn’t answered the phone. Will Plaza make a reappearance?

My Old Ass is finally about the resilience of young people and the importance of living in the moment. One’s best life is spent with the people one loves, even if you have no interest in harvesting cranberries. Older Elliott tells her younger self that although she doesn’t come home for her first Thanksgiving after starting college, she should do so. We have no idea whether she switches her plans after her life-altering summer.

 

Reviewed at Sundance London, Monday 3^rd June 2024, Picture House Central Screen Four, Shaftesbury Avenue, 09:00am press screening