Departing Seniors (2023)
Directed by Clare Cooney
The 59th Chicago International Film Festival
Residing somewhere in between the crude humor of Emma Seligman’s Bottoms and the visual abundance of Joaquim Dos Santos’ (et al) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is Clare Cooney’s high school “genre-bending” feature film debut, Departing Seniors. “Genre-bending” seems like an insufficient descriptor when discussing the film, where at times it reads like a progressive version of Degrassi melded with Wes Craven’s Scream. Tone is everything and much like Seligman’s film, Departing Seniors is all over the place; it’s never funny enough, often too somber, violent yet too lighthearted in pivotal sequences, and never quite gay enough. All profoundly thoughtful critiques, I know. But once I set aside my persistent issues with Departing Seniors’ messy tone, I found myself won over by the film’s impeccable cast and Cooney’s measured direction.
The film centers on a high school student named Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silveiro) and his best friend Bianca (Ireon Roach). It’s a week until graduation as Cooney and writer Jose Nateras adopt a pretty limp framing device to chart time. Javier, on the cusp of being valedictorian (how has this not been decided a week before graduation), is the subject of bullying by his competition Ginny (a cartoonish Maisie Merlock) and her jock boyfriend. Your capacity to jibe with the film’s sometimes campy, sometimes not tone will hinge on how forgiving you are of these initial expository sequences, which can be a bit embarrassing to sit through. The bullying results in an accident; Javier takes a serious tumble and is hospitalized. He soon discovers that the incident awakened psychic powers, wherein touching objects will spur on a flood of memories, where he can witness the future or the past or… honestly, it’s rather unclear (he’s able to visualize his nurse’s grief over losing a family member yet is also capable of observing the future in fragments). What follows is a gonzo mystery thriller where he and Bianca attempt to piece together a spate of unsolved murders.
The whys, whences, and general logic of the narrative can be mostly forgiven by a quality five milligram dose of THC or psilocybin. While the logical part of my brain resisted many of Departing Seniors’ narrative stumbles, I was impressed by Diaz-Silveiro and Roach’s chemistry. Roach in particular has an ebullient charm that made the most of her limited screen time. And while Nateras’ screenplay could stand two or three (dozen) revisions, I was impressed by Cooney’s formal directorial command. Her 2017 short Runner suggested this prowess and it’s the quieter moments of the film - where Javier and Bianca are simply laying on the lawn of their school campus, vibing - that impressed me most. Her camera moves steadily and percussively with her characters, deriving tension out of the everyday and mundane. It’s during the trippier sequences, when Javier succumbs to his visions, that she loses her way a bit. But the finer details in escalating mood are largely a result of Cooney’s formalism and the strength of her performers. It’s a notably charming debut feature, and if presented with a tighter screenplay, I can only imagine better things from Cooney.
Departing Seniors opens locally at The Music Box Theatre as part of the 59th Chicago International Film Festival on Wednesday, October 11, 2023. Director Clare Cooney is scheduled to attend the screening.