“All you talk about is leaving this place.”

Can we talk about that boat? It’s either cursed now and so stained or it’s got a life of its own and has been playing cupid throughout. She done it in the boat with so many people now. Hahaha.

I went to see this today after having no luck in going to a Q&A screening for over a month. It was just the bad luck of the draw with when my days off from work were. The room was not packed at all. Besides me, there were only four other people. In spite of this, I think it can be safe to say that with everything going on: the fallout of COVID, the strike, wars, genocides, the political climate and the state of animosity between human beings all over the world, there is now a place in all our hearts for that "homey film" genre which seeks to restore what truly matters. Even if they're not as cinematic as epic as other crowdpleasers, we readily accept films like CODA, DIDI and now MY OLD ASS because of how they make us feel.

Set in Ontario, Canada (namely Lake Muskoka) and starring Aubrey Plaza and newcomer Maisy Stella as older and younger versions of Canadian native, Elliott, My Old Ass may feel like a film that's retreading the same-old ground of coming of age and mid-life crises movies, entangled with the themes of living life to the fullest and realizing how ephemeral life is. Yes, it’s also the second film of the year to tell the story about someone heading off to college. Flashback, too, to CODA. But it achieves what Park clearly wanted. Emotion.

The anecdotes get to you. I actually sat back in my seat and raised my eyes to the ceiling in deep thought when Chad was talking about playing zombie survival with friends and going home afterward. The mother’s twinkle, twinkle and crib story only went further and came close to getting a sob out of me. “In that moment I realized I wasn’t going to get to rock you anymore.” Don't do this to me. Then there's the sparks of fiery love. The moments of Chad staring at Elliott and vice versa really work. The amount of times I've stared longingly at a girl's face. Woof. “What does your gut tell you to do?” / “I’ve never had dick sex before.”

I felt for the protagonist, Elliott, as she faces so many unthinkable things that can shake your consciousness at any age. 18 or 39, it’s the same. The difficult thoughts that come with leaving home for the first time. Realizing that your family farm, the ‘roots’ and lifeblood of your childhood is going to be sold. Although Elliott coming to the opinion that Chad is a perfect human being is more tell than show, the heat, passion and butterflies you feel for someone when you first fall in love is there. Most of all, the premise of meeting your older self. And for older Elliott, it’s the realization that you can’t back and change things. It’s all telling you that nothing is ever fully in your control.

“I just wish time could stop for a little second so I could enjoy it a little bit longer.”

Elliott thus goes from the girl saying, “I’m so happy my life is about to start” and refusing to be a third generation cranberry farmer and small towner to sitting down with her brothers and mother and actually feeling sad when she discovers that the sale of their farm is a foregone conclusion. Her response to buckle down, try to salvage something out of the situation is mature but it is also gut instinct as demonstrated when she says, “I’m going to love him for however long I have". Yes, it’s the youth in her, the untested naivete and daring. But also the heart. It hits the heart. Beautiful shot too with the sunlight.

Park thereby explores they reasons why young people make the decisions that they day whereas older people are more jaded. It’s a fascinating look and a reminder well-constructed in a parallel life that while happening QUITE QUICKLY in a few days, it feels like a realized transformation.

I will admit that the final reveal of Chad eventually dying was a little underwhelming. I am sorry, but Arrival did the future death premise the best and it can't be surpassed. By the time older Elliott started to not respond to her younger self, I was also starting to develop an in-world reason for why. So maybe that didn't need to happen. But Megan Park do be killing it out here, making me go from feeling indifferent to and turned off by teenagers getting high to actually caring when Elliott has a conversation with her older self and it inspires her to finally value the place where she grew up and most of all her family. That’s very much what I went through to a T before I moved out to California. I spent more time in my nature and with other people. Only, I didn’t have a boat that I could take dates to and have sex in. I didn’t even have a partner, hahahaha. But TMI. I related hard to Max, the boy who says he would've been okay taking over the family business. What shit he must have been going through for so long... I cried silently through the scene of older Elliott meeting Chad. It could've easily become cheesy but it wasn't. Points earned too for the way Park goes about disentangling the labels we put on things like gender and respecting straight love. Elliott has great friends and respect to them for still believing in Elliott as she's still working on finding out who she is.

“The only thing you can’t get back is time.”

Park juggles so many different elements from the start (The family. Her relationships. The farm. Her older self). It all somehow manages to work out, to the film's credit despite some characters coming, going and disappearing again without full completion of the arc. Her ever-present taste for basing a film around intimate conversations, spunky, fun dialogue (all of which tracks with Park's 2021 film, Fallout, carries over seamlessly to My Old Ass. Only My Old Ass goes a step further, getting the story going faster, using montage editing to showcase moments of excitement, incorporating the world and space into the story as a character, adding a bit of magical realism to the world in a way akin to Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman, and injecting the film with a fire needle drop score. Not to say the film isn’t without problems. The crush she had sort of vanished and I would’ve liked some more work done with Max but that scene where Elliott sleeps in her brothers’ room was the sweetest. The film as a whole just feels more contained rather than going in a more complex direction (say a threesome road with Chad, Elliott and what’s her name….) but this isn’t Y Tu Mama También or The Challengers and that's a good thing because it matches the tone and there were already so many moving pieces. I very much look forward to what Megan Park and her team has to offer next.