The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Beautiful Girls, Not-So-Pretty Boys

August 4th, 2006

This week we Netflixed a movie simply because it had Natalie Portman in it, and we hadn’t yet seen it. The movie in question was 1996’s Beautiful Girls, and the 14-year-old Portman is the best thing in it. (She was 14 at the time of filming, though her character was 13, and she would have been 15 by the time the movie was released. Just in case you were wondering.)

Portman’s age is a big deal here, because one of the many sad schlumps populating this working-class Northeast town has a bit of a crush on her. He’s 27. His name is Willy, and he’s returned home for a visit after several years of trying to make a living playing piano in New York. He’s clearly got family issues with his father and brother, but the movie—wisely, in this case—doesn’t really dwell on these. Instead, it focuses on Willy, his high school buddies, and the various ways in which they each idealize female beauty, while neglecting the real women beside them.

The movie’s pretty blatant about its theme—you couldn’t miss it from ten miles away, even without Rosie O’Donnell’s funny and accurate, but extremely out-of-place, soliloquy about Penthouse, Playboy, and other such magazines. The reason it’s out-of-place? O’Donnell’s character seems to have been inserted into the film simply to deliver this tirade. Actually, that’s the case with most of the characters, male or female: they’re each there to serve a particular function in delivering the movie’s message. 

Anyway, back to Natalie Portman. Though Willy has a girlfriend his own age, it’s clear to see why he’s fascinated by Portman’s character Marty. She’s got a rapier-sharp wit, she’s capable of amazing psychological insight, she’s extremely literate, and, oh yeah, she’s pretty. We see all this through a series of outdoor conversations between the two (Marty lives next door to Willy’s father and brother). Despite the obvious age difference problems, Porpoise and I found ourselves somehow hoping that Willy would wait around for Marty to reach legal age.

Of course, in real life, a 27-year-old developing a crush on a 13-year-old would be pretty creepy, not just because of the 14-year age gap, but mostly because Marty’s character is essentially still a child. A very mature child—an “old soul,” as she says—but a child nevertheless. Fortunately for everyone involved, Willy has decided, by the end of the movie, to settle down with his girlfriend, rather than waiting for Marty to grow up or trying to find an already grown-up version of her.

Yet, again, I think part of the reason we found ourselves rooting for Marty-and-Willy was that their conversation truly is on the same level. It’s a problem no doubt familiar to many of us girls from our teenage years. The boys our own age were typically eons behind us in emotional maturity, and yet older men could possibly be predators. Though I certainly wasn’t as quick with the one-liners as Marty when I was 13, I could identify with her character. Growing up, I spent an unusual amount of time around adults, and when I started dating, I actually had to become younger, in a way. My mom, when I was a teenager, told me that she could imagine me marrying someone a good bit older than I was. But then, after Porpoise and I became friends but before we were dating, before Mama Chipmunk had even met him, she had the wisdom to point out that we sounded like kindred souls, even though he was only two years older—because we watched Muppet movies together. That was the key for me: finding someone mature enough to be childlike.

But, when I was a teenager, there didn’t seem like much hope. Despite attending a high school of 3,000 students, I felt like I’d exhausted all the desirable resources by the time I was a junior. No doubt many of today’s teenage girls are in a similar position. No doubt many of them find conversation at their own level online. And no doubt they also find scary older men who are actually looking for relationships with teenage girls. Ick.

Beautiful Girls mostly tells the story from the perspective of its male characters, so it doesn’t really deal with Marty’s side of the dilemma. And that’s fine, because that’s not really what the movie is about. Marty is simply there because she’s one more expression of the tempting, but un-live-able ideal.

Portman plays a rather similar, but older, role in 2004’s Garden State, another movie that chronicles a confused twenty-something boy-man’s return home. The parallels are numerous, though I liked Garden State better. For one thing, Portman’s character, though she displays a childlike joy in life, is only a few years younger than Zach Braff’s, so a believable romance can actually happen between them. The film also addresses emotional healing in, admittedly, some heavy-handed ways, but I resonated more with the theme of dealing with depression and guilt than with the “growing up and accepting reality” theme of Beautiful Girls. Plus, I like Zach Braff’s face. 

But I’m glad we saw Beautiful Girls, if only because it introduced us to a charming character.

Entry Filed under: Movies