pictures of me on your bedroom door (review of All Over Me)

I don’t enjoy much 1990s nostalgia. Maybe it’s too soon (for me). Maybe it’s that I was (relatively) alert and paying attention in that time period that I don’t long for the clothes, the hair, the pre-Facebook ignorance. I do, however, have a soft spot in my heart for 1990s music.

All Over Me (1997) is set in the mid to late ‘90s, in (a very, very white, minus Ricky from My So Called Life) Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. This movie starts with credits. I do not enjoy this. I like to forget that I am watching a movie. I like the action to, wham, start immediately, Showing a long list of credits and who did what, movie wise, distracts me from this.

Claude and Ellen are best friends. They’re in high school, like music and have nonexistent/uncaring or sometimes present/obvious parents. Claude has a crush on Ellen (I think you could draw parallels between Ellen and Claude’s mom - she has to ‘take care’ of both, both are man obsessed). Ellen, however is is all wrapped up in a rock ‘em, sock ‘em drug slinging thug. One of my (other) problems is the character of Ellen. Sure, this is a Claude-driven movie. It’s about her. It’s about her discovering herself, her sexuality at a time of the burgeoning angsty grrl power movement (by the way, where did that movement go?). All other characters are but shadows to play off Claude, but you think Ellen would be a little more developed. She starts the film as a ‘normal’ boy crazy moody teen. Suddenly, she becomes a Lifetime movie-esque drug addict (tries to run away with strangers: check, almost ODs in the bathroom: check) rather quickly, seemingly in minutes, in between scenes.

Claude is Claude. She’s oblivious at times, but I suppose, she is a teenager. We’ve all been mind numbingly dumb, in hindsight. But, then, there was a scene set to a large portion of a Geraldine Fibbers song (and this was shortly after a Sleater-Kinney song! Imagine!). And that alone upped this movie for me. I would highly recommend this movie if 1990s nostalgia, or, specifically, Riot Grrl culture, makes you smile and/or you dig the music.

Similar and, in my opinion, better movies (though light on the grrl power thing) Girl (1998) and Thirteen (2003).