The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Please, Drew Barrymore, don't do a dating reality show! Plus: Christmas at 30 Rock, another Gossip Girl couple, and since when is Elisha Cuthbert 'sloppy seconds'?
If you think that fifteen-year-old girls just want to have fun, then you haven't seen the 1980 summer camp flick Little Darlings (tagline: "Don't let the title fool you"). No, girls just want to have sex. It's the only movie in this classic
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genre that gets where the dirt is: In the girls' bunk. Thus, there's nary a tit or ass shot in sight (unless you're counting ass of the male variety), because the entire movie is shot from the perspective of fifteen-year-old girl campers. Horny fifteen-year-old girl campers. With binoculars and potty mouths. And we're not just talking Britney-esque coquetry; this is full-on Christina Aguilera ho-dom.
The gist of the plot is this: Ferris Whitney (a pre-coke Tatum O'Neal) is the poor little rich virgin, and Angel Bright (a pre-lezzie Kristy McNichol) is the street-tough, Marlboro-Red-chain-smoking virgin from the wrong side of the tracks. All the other girls in Bunk Seven at this New England camp (including a pre-Sex and the City Cynthia Nixon) claim to know what it means to be a woman, though the only one who says it with any conviction is bitch-slut Cinder the "Tidy Curl" Model (a pre-nothing Krista Errickson). So Cinder wages a bet with the $100 she received for the "Tidy Curl" ad: Whoever gets her cherry popped first wins the dough. The other girls all place their bets on rich girl or poor girl, and the games begin.
The first order of business is to score some prophylactics. (Told you it was filmed from the chick perspective.) The campers hotwire a yellow school bus, drive to the nearest gas station and commandeer a condom dispenser from the men's bathroom the coin slot is jammed so they have to carry it back to the campground woods and break it open with an axe. (It's the estrogen-fueled version of the fax-machine destruction montage in 1999's Office Space.) When the metal casing finally splits, the girls whoop and holler, punch their fists in the air, inflate a few celebratory condoms, then stuff the remaining rubbers in their pockets and head back to camp for the second order of business: Identifying willing (or, rather, unwitting) guinea pigs.
Actually, Angel has already laid eyes on her man: The cherry-lipped, hair-flipped Matt Dillon who was loitering, drunk, in the gas station parking lot. She (and the camera) clocks his denim-clad ass first; Angel raises an eyebrow (baum-chick-a-baum), tilts her head (as in "Yeah, you'll do"), lights a smoke and waits for him to turn around. Her seduction is deliciously to the point: "What's your name?" [Exhale] "Mine?" [Inhale] "Yeah, yours: I already know mine." [Exhale] "What's yours?" [Inhale] "Angel. Don't let the name fool you." [Exhale] "Randy. Don't let the name fool you." Turns out he's staying just across the lake (not to mention the wrong side of the tracks). Aw yeah.
Ferris stays closer to home, setting her sights on hunky French camp counselor/failed writer Mr. Callahan (Armand Assante, a.k.a. the hunky French luvver in Private Benjamin and hunky Cuban luvver in The Mambo Kings). Ferris (and her lead investor, Cinder) employs every bad pick-up line and sexual-harassment trick in the book to get Mr. Callahan to abandon his white tube socks and his prissy "I don't do fifteen year olds" policy, including the fail-safe "I've got six months to live" and the solid runner-up, "Help, help, I'm drowning." Angel's not so smooth with the lines, so she gets her prey wasted instead. "You're supposed to get turned on, stupid, not pass out," she tells the back of his slumped head probably the last time that phrase was uttered by anyone other than a frat boy in heat.
Meanwhile, the other girls prance around camp in tight T-shirts emblazoned with their loyalties ("Angel" or "Ferris"), playing sexy music (on a recorder!) near the would-be lovers, keeping bit-part campers away from the girls in action, and spying on boy campers frolicking naked in the lake to while away the hours till dinner. (This voyeurism scene is the only acknowledgement that there are, indeed, boy campers present.) The objectification is both crass (did I mention the potty mouth and the binoculars?) and naive, and it's eminently clear that Cinder's the only camper who has made it past second base. But it doesn't matter, because the movie's not about the boy, at all, it's about "becoming a woman" and about learning what that phrase (and that phase) really means. And most of all, it's about who's watching whom the girls are the subject, while the boys are merely the objects of desire in butt-cheek-skimming tight shorts, cut-off shirts (apparently that was a male-only fashion statement back then), and tube socks.
I never went to sleepover camp in England, where I grew up, not even the bad kids or the really fat kids got sent away for weeks on end but I think that if I had, I'd find tube socks a lot sexier now. (Assuming that Little Darlings has even an ounce of truth to it.) In fact, after watching it three times this week, I'm ready to buy a six-pack of tubies at Kmart and keep them in my nightstand right next to the condoms. Those things are hot. Especially when paired with tighty-whities and nothing else on a barely legal Matt Dillon. (Madison Avenue resurrects pixie boots and leg warmers, but not tube-socks what's up with that?)
But the so-this-minute '80s outfits in Little Darlings (from Angel's tight slogan tees to Ferris's Bianca Jagger white trouser suit) aren't the only reason this movie seems decades ahead of its time. This movie is more than just a portrait of the female gaze; it's one of the most grown-up portrayals of teenage sex I've ever seen. The concept of wise-beyond-their-years campers was lampooned in Wet Hot American Summer (the recently separated counselor played by Molly Shannon elopes with a ten-year-old camper), but here, it works. Sex is so much more and so much less than the girls expect, and that's true whether you're fifteen or fifty-five. Both more intense ("I felt like you could see through me") and less so ("I feel so lonesome"); more permanent ("I'll never forget you") and less so ("Summer dreams ripped at the seams . . . " wait, wrong movie). And sex is everything from a means to a betting end, to a way to declare true wuv. "What are the after-effects of sex?" Ferris asks a female counselor. "You make it sound like a disease," she responds. "It sort of is," says Ferris. Good luck finding a truer sentiment than that in a teen sex romp because I've been to band camp, and I'm telling you, no one sticks their flute anywhere.n°
with an axe. (It's the estrogen-fueled version of the fax-machine destruction montage in 1999's Office Space.) When the metal casing finally splits, the girls whoop and holler, punch their fists in the air, inflate a few celebratory condoms, then stuff the remaining rubbers in their pockets and head back to camp for the second order of business: Identifying willing (or, rather, unwitting) guinea pigs.
supposed to get turned on, stupid, not pass out," she tells the back of his slumped head probably the last time that phrase was uttered by anyone other than a frat boy in heat.
and keep them in my nightstand right next to the condoms. Those things are hot. Especially when paired with tighty-whities and nothing else on a barely legal Matt Dillon. (Madison Avenue resurrects pixie boots and leg warmers, but not tube-socks what's up with that?)
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
