Director: Ol Parker
Talent: Dakota Fanning, Paddy Considine, Olivia Williams, Jeremy Irvine
Release Date: 21st September 2012
There’s a particularly dark scene in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club in which a character called Chloe, who has terminal brain parasites, makes increasingly aggressive sexual advances towards others in a desperate bid to have sex again before she dies. Ol Parker’s latest film takes this corker of a concept and stretches it out across 103 minutes.
Teenage Tessa (Dakota Fanning, sporting a Vidal Sassoon cut and an English intonation) compiles a list of cool and funky things she wants to do before she croaks from leukemia. Foremost is losing her virginity, something her protective Dad (Paddy Considine, bizarrely channeling Gerry Ryan) isn’t happy with. The grim reality of cancer treatment is quickly cast aside as Parker decides to present a version that involves Lana Del Rey remixes, slow motion horse rides and dreamily perfect boys that live next door. It all becomes so excruciatingly twee that there’s a perverse relief from the inference that film must be nearing its end when a doctor tells Tessa she’s only got mere days left. Now Is Good is, assuredly, far from good.
Words: Alex Towers
