The indie rock kids are alright

Sound of silver, talk to me
Makes you want to feel like a teenager
Until you remember the feelings of
A real-life emotional teenager
Then you think again

- LCD Soundsystem, “Sound of Silver”

Ah, to be young again. When the possibilities seemed endless, true responsibility was barely on the horizon and first kisses were all that mattered.

For all of our society’s fetishistic treatment of youth, it doesn’t take much to recall what a singularly difficult time adolescence can be for many – one rife with self-doubt, teeming with awkwardness and the lingering promise of a daily dose of paralyzing peer pressure.

TIFF shines a light on that most turbulent of life transitions with two distinctly different views on what teens on the brink of adulthood get into once the sun goes down.

Derrière Moi follows 23-year-old Betty (Carina Caputo), the trendy city girl visiting a sleepy Quebec town where she befriends the uptight, inexperienced Léa (Charlotte Legault) whose own family drama has led her to rebel against her rebellious mother by playing it straight. Betty represents all of the bad choices 14-year-old Léa hasn’t had a chance to make and, in an obvious bid to impress her worldly friend, it isn’t long before she’s experiencing life through a hallucinogenic haze herself.

For all of Léa’s willingness to experiment with drugs, alcohol, boys and more, she never completely buys into Betty’s masquerade of glamorous late nights and after-parties because she’s still a child playing a part. Betty too is merely putting on a show, for Léa as much as herself, desperate to prove that an extra shot or another pill will make each experience more intense, more real.

Standing in stark contrast to these indulgent femme fatales are Nick (Brampton’s comedic wunderkind Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings), the awkward, teenaged almost-couple at the centre of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, wherein the music-obsessed duo hunt for Norah’s boozehound friend and try to locate a much-hyped secret show, all while avoiding liquor and without puffing on cigarettes of any kind.

It’s established early on that both are straight-edge – meaning they don’t drink or do drugs – and this fact is revealed without issue or convoluted explanation. With uncomfortable talk of exes and pregnant pauses – a Cera signature – standing in the place of shotgunning beers or toking till dawn, director Peter Sollett shows that members of this oft-misrepresented subculture can deal with their own brand of hipster ennui through talking and, importantly, the shared love of music.

While writer-director Rafaël Ouellet doesn’t allow his leads such positive therapeutic opportunities, he similarly shows the raw, adolescent insecurity at the root of both Léa’s misguided choices and Betty’s transparent pantomime.

Though working within different genres and tackling smaller, trivial details and larger societal issues, respectively, both Sollett and Ouellet succeed in providing insight and (sometimes ugly) truths about a period in time and state of mind that represents, for better or worse, a turning point in the lives of most.