One of the benefits of breaking three ribs and missing the world premiere of Turn Me On, Godammit at the Tribeca Film Festival is that then you get sent a screener of the film, and then you get to watch it multiple times!  Huzzah!

This incredibly funny, honest and unique look at coming of age (in the best possible sense of the term) won Best Screenplay at festival, and it’s no wonder.  However, I was equally transfixed with Norwegian writer/director Jannicke Jacobson’s compositions and renderings of small town life on the fjord.  The cinematics and the storyline work in lockstep from the moody opening shots set to our heroine’s wry voice over. 

While many in this country championed last years teen comedy Easy A (and yes, Emma Stone delivers a great performance), the film irked me because no one was actually having sex or wanting to have sex, and while it did portray how high school rumor mills can be as unreliable as they are damaging, it wasn’t a very honest, or worthwhile, approach to teenage sexuality.  Turn Me On, Godammit shows how rumors harm, how a woman’s reputation can be both subject to judgemental whims and the property of the those doing the judgement, but it never apologizes for its young heroines sex drive.  In fact it celebrates it in the most wondrous and humorous manner. The film doesn’t preach these ideas to the viewer, the story is much more sophisticated in it’s simple approach of Alma,15 and horny, her confounded mother, and Artur, the object of her affections.  And then there’s her best friend, Sarahlou, who writes letters to prisoners on Texas’ Death Row, in one of my favorite subplots in recent and not-so recent memory.  All the young actor’s in this film are first time film actors, and they deliver wonderful, believable performances, free of caricature.

I really, really adored this film.