Dir. Jamie J Johnson, UK , 2008, 89 mins
Documentary Feature
Review by Kevin Gill
Wittily announcing itself as “a popumentary” during the opening titles, Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a refreshingly knockabout fly-on-the-wall feature about the junior version of the Eurovision Song Contest. It is a typically quirky subject for director Jamie J Johnson, whose back catalogue includes documentary shorts about people who own robotic dogs, the world championship in mini-golf, and the slowest ever swimmer in Olympic Games history. To focus on children for his feature length debut is a relatively bankable move, since young subjects have provided priceless material to documentary filmmakers during the genre's recent popularity boom – and, as a crowd-pleaser at the very least, Teen Spirit is easily the equal of, say, Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound , Marilyn Agrelo's Mad Hot Ballroom or Nicolas Philibert's Être at Avoir . Structurally, in fact, it is very similar to Blitz's breakthrough movie, following a selection of contestants in their homes and towns in the build up to the competition and reaching its climax as the tension builds at the Rotterdam final.
Johnson's approach, however, differs from Blitz's in that he is not interested in probing any sinister forces that might propel children into the heat of competition. Pushy parents are nowhere to be seen or heard in Teen Spirit , while none of the young contestants seem motivated by narcissistic impulses or material desires. Indeed, one of the most appealing aspects of the film is that none of the contestants ever mention the prospect of actually winning the competition. The director hopped from country to country during the final group stages to find his subjects, and has selected an intelligent, charismatic, and articulate cast of characters.
This, allied with Johnson's evident skill at making his subjects at ease in front of the camera (he shot most of the footage with only a sound recordist in tow), makes for sequences of both understated hilarity and intimate poignancy. The members of Belgian rock band Trust, a group of 15-year-old school pals from Ypres, arguably serve up the film's funniest moments with their natural camaraderie and awkward physicality. Gangly drummer Laurens is always quick to demonstrate his burgeoning interest in girls, and later struggles with the moves for the group dance sequence that opens the final show. One journalist shrewdly observes that the band doesn't really fit the profile for Junior Eurovision: “They have the best song, but they are too big.” It's almost the opposite case for pint-sized Cypriot Giorgos, but you can't help but agree with his logic when he explains that, in an earlier round, he started out of tune but purposely didn't correct it in the hope that the judges wouldn't notice. Elsewhere, the children's innocent vulnerability comes quietly to the fore, as when Giorgos talks of being bullied by his peers for favouring singing over football, or only child Marina shares her hope that her estranged father will tune in to her performance on television and return to the family home.
For the most part, Johnson allows his subjects to speak from themselves, but the occasional formal flourish brings an extra dimension of mischief or emotion. On one occasion, the soundtrack has Giorgos talking earnestly about his hopes for the competition while we see him struggling down a stairway with an oversized suitcase. In another memorable sequence, Johnson uses a kaleidoscopic image effect to complement Mariana's reveries during a walk through snowy woodland. The inevitable slo-mo montage sequence set to Abba's ‘The Winner Takes It All' finally arrives, but the effect is strangely euphoric rather than groan-inducing. Most moving of all is a sequence that cuts back and forth between television footage of cherubic 13-year-old Mariam's performance and shots of her impoverished friends and family watching on a snowy black and white set back home in Gori, Georgia. A peculiar on-off commentary about the Eurovision phenomenon rising out of the ashes of World War Two is less successful, but you can forgive Johnson the simplistic attempt to engage younger viewers with historical context.
The tacky razzmatazz of Eurovision and its eccentric entourage also brings absurdly comic moments to Teen Spirit that could be lifted straight out of a Christopher Guest movie: a Maltese journalist puts his obsession with the contest down to his love of flags; two Russian sisters burst into an impromptu rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You' at the mention of Whitney Houston; and a garishly-dressed Barbie doll presenter announces she's “almost wetting herself with excitement”. Far from patronising, however, the key to the film's success is that it never feels anything less than wholly affectionate towards its subjects – even the most hardened Eurovision-sceptic will find difficult to resist Sounds Like Teen Spirit's winning charm. |
