You May Have Missed... Afterschool (Antonio Campos, 2008)

Ezra Miller stars in the controversial high school drama Afterschool (2008)

Synopsis: A lonely, depressed prep school student named Robert is addicted to the Internet and media; consequently his social skills are minimal. One day he's filming locations around the school for a media project and catches on film the overdose and death of two of the schools most popular and respected students - a pair of much-loved twins. Robert is given the job of making a memorial video, but as he struggles with his feelings for fellow student Amy his dark side starts to unfurl and manifests itself in dangerous ways...

Falling somewhere between Michael Haneke's Benny's Video (1992) and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park (2007), Antonio Campos' debut feature is the sort of film America generally isn't brave enough to make anymore. His is a cynical brand of filmmaking, an exposé of our corrupt youth and overexposure to online access. There's a line in David Fincher's The Social Network (2010) where Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) says to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), "We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the Internet." Well the students of Afterschool are those people - although networking isn't so much the concern of Campos as an all too easy exposure to violence and sexuality. One of the very first shots in the film is the handheld phone footage of the hanging of Saddam Hussein, which sets the tone for the entire piece. Campos made his name in short films, and this is closest in tone to his 2005 outing Buy It Now, about a 16-year-old girl who sells her virginity on Ebay. It's sharp as a tack, suspicious of the online/technological revolution and an unbiased indictment of its misuse. And here's where we begin...

If it lacks the caustic bite and sardonic wit of Haneke's best work, that's because Afterschool unfolds in subdued emotion and spiked silences, sporadically observing acts of random violence with the potential to break into its own. The film essays various forms of voyeurism; within the world of cyberspace and also in terms of cinematic text. The film opens with Robert (Ezra Miller) masturbating to porn on the Internet. The derision of sexual pleasure from images is scopophilia, which the film somewhat pretentiously nods back to throughout the running time of the film. The prime voyeuristic pleasure is intra-diegetic; characters 'gazing' upon other characters within the framework of the film. There is also a distinct difference, in the composition of shots, between what Robert films and what Campos is observing for himself.

That's not to say it isn't tough though, because it is. Damn tough in places. An early scene sees Robert with the object of his affection Amy (Addison Timlin) as they video each other, talking about virginity. He feels awkward, almost picked on, so turns the camera on her, probing into her sex life. As he gets closer to her face we see fear run across it. He reaches down to stroke her cheek before moving his hand to her throat and tightening around it like he'd seen in an earlier porn video. He later tells the school psychologist that he likes those videos because "the girls get really scared" - it's the porn he jerks off to. He also repeats a line from that video to his psychologist, "your mom gets fucked for money", which in some ways shows how much the Internet has fed into his persona and ability in social situations. Later on in the film Robert and Amy lose their virginity to each other in the woods... it's so awkward that it's almost terrifying. The calm, complacent look on Robert's face remains as he hands her his shirt to stop the bleeding... he will later tell his psychologist that he's "peeling. the skin is coming off in some places"... it's almost as if he's evolving, rapidly, becoming aware of the part he plays in a cesspool dressed as a private prep-school. The young snake sheds his skin.

It is also, obviously, a film about addiction: the twins to cocaine, Robert to the Internet. It's a film that portrays addiction in a lonely silence, for the film has no score, and basically says that drugs and pornography have become such a large part of consumerism that it has infected our youth culture and schools. We never spend one scene with the twins alone, we never get to judge their character for ourselves, but everyone always speaks of their beauty, intelligence, class and respectability - indeed, the psychologist knew of their drug problem, brought it to the school committee and was ignored, being told that the girls represent too much of the schools esteemed reputation. It is telling then that Campos chooses them to die from cocaine cut with rat poison. If they are the upstanding model, what is left in their wake? Robert? That's a worrying thought...

The final shot of the film is extra-diegetic; Robert staring into his own frame, disconcerted by the image he sees back. Who is filming him? It scarcely matters, but the fun answer would be to say that in the last frame Campos has escaped from the (admirably) restrained, calm and collected real world that he has created and the person filming Robert is himself. As Sight & Sound's Lisa Mullen says, (in reference to who's to blame) "Or the uninvolved bystander who can't watch and can't not watch - who steps into his own frame and then can't cope with what he finds there?" Perhaps this is Robert confronting himself, as the audience suddenly learns his involvement may have been a little more than he makes out...

Clearly living in a post-Heathers (Lehmann, 1988) world, Afterschool is sublime, haunting, abrasive and mesmeric. Filled with terrific performances, the film is well aware of the history of contemporary High School cinema, starting with The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), and deliciously enjoys turning its conventions on their head. Seek it out. You'll be talking about it for days afterwards...