Starring: Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: USA
UK Distributor: A24
A24 is the Miramax of our time. You see that logo and you know what sort of a film you’re letting yourself in for, but just because the studio comes with all its prestige, that doesn’t mean the film will actually be watchable. Case in point: I Saw The TV Glow.
Owen (Smith) has been obsessed with his favourite TV show – The Pink Opaque – since childhood, when he used to sneak out of his parents’ house to watch the late-night supernatural series with his older friend Maddy (Lundy-Paine). Obsessed with the mythology of its story, the young pair find solace in its escapism, only to feel the boundaries between reality and fiction begin to blur. And when Maddy goes missing on the same day the show is cancelled, Owen is left trying to understand what was the nature of their relationship to the show.
In an era of extreme TV fandoms, this feels like timely nostalgia, where teen audiences entrenched in shows like Euphoria or Stranger Things can totally relate to Millennials who grew up obsessed with the lore of Charmed or Buffy. The Pink Opaque is a deliberately cheap retro pastiche complete with passé credits and terrible visual effects. But as the show bleeds into Owen and Maddy’s world, these absurdities are given weight by the director, treating its lore with the seriousness of Shakespeare.
The entire movie is a thinly veiled trans narrative, in which both its leads discover their own truths through fiction. Their reaction is to this contrast, but its Maddy’s acceptance of it that allows her to become part of the world she yearned for, while it’s Owen’s rejection that keeps him miserably anchored in reality. Mysteriously burning TV sets and the appearance of characters in the real world keep the truth of the story frustratingly ambiguous, while the film’s central allegory is milked for all its worth with a colour palate drenched in the colours of the trans flag throughout.
As the film skips forward in time and the actors do not age, you’re left wondering if the strands of its fragmented narrative will eventually be drawn together by its finale. But in true arthouse form, they’re absolutely not. And while we’re served long observational scenes with the teenage protagonists peppered with tenuous Easter eggs to a nonsensical TV show, we’re not delivered any narrative depth, instead left trudging through a dense character drama that’s deliberately opaque and refusing to be accessible. There may be short sequences with Owen in a dress or adult Maddy saying she’s changed her name, but the allegory is left so... allegorical that it has become the centre of the film without actually becoming the plot. Subsequently, this is a film not based on story or character but instead just one hundred minutes of a metaphor, which it’s very pleased about inflicting upon you. And while David Lynch might be proud of its commitment to enigma, even he would be asking for some kind of resolution.
Schoenbrun has succeeded in making a film that’s difficult to digest, but it’s really not as original as it thinks it is. After an entire decade of nostalgia-horror, this is just an avant-garde take on an already established sub-genre that feels like a mumblecore Videodrome. And just because it’s arty, that doesn’t mean it has any more substance than a pulp fiction flick.
UK Release: 27th July 2024 in cinemas, released by A24
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