Share [2019]
“I don't want help, I just want to remember.”
Directorial debut Share is a level headed, very smart, and startlingly real look at the life of a high-school girl and the way her world crumbles after a night of heavy drinking that ends in a sexual assault. The tact, sincerity, and temerity it took to make this film in the way she did, shows Pippa Bianco to be a truly bright star on the horizon of filmmaking. Featuring excellent dialogue and some of the best parenting I’ve seen in film, Share shows the subtle horrors and deep, reverberating grief that can come from the predators around us that masquerade as people we know.
Share’s greatest strengths lie in its performances and careful writing. I would most closely compare this to Never Rarely Sometimes Always in the sense that characters aren’t dramatic, their adventures aren’t grand or fanciful, and, in the end, what happens to them is just a drop in the bucket of life with virtually nothing changing around them. There’s no revolution in our lead’s name by the end of the film, no one saves her from her grief, and nothing prevents the same situation from happening again. It’s not apocalyptic, and it’s not revealed to be some demonic machination that abstracts the story into more classical good/ evil tropes; it’s just life. Bad things happen and the world moves on. Your sudden awakening face down on your lawn with no idea of how you got there is just a blip on the radar. People will stop and talk and stare and console; but until it happens to them, they will never understand. They will never truly find the impetus to change and society at large will never have the empathy its most vulnerable and degraded members need. That realization, that need for containment and simple, undramatic understanding, is what Share is about.
Share is a coming-of-age story in the worst way. Oftentimes, we see “coming-of-age” as a glorious moment – a metamorphosis from the shiny but simple world of being a child into the more complex and three-dimensional one of adulthood. A transcendence from the world our guardians shepherded us through, into our own where we can truly be ourselves and see the world for what we make of it. Napoleon Dynamite, Spontaneous, Lady Bird, and CODA all show various forms of this phenomena in action. There’s always a strife, always a struggle as what is, starts to become what will be… but none of these examine what happens when that metamorphosis – that resplendent revelation – comes in the form of a nightmare.
Where 2017’s Super Dark Times does explore this side of the coin, it does so with bravado and a clear Kubrickian malignity. Share is subtler, more sinister, more real. It follows closer lines to 1995’s Kids, but forgoes the brash delivery in favor of simple and elegant storytelling that allows you to sit and feel right alongside the characters rather than telling you what to think or distressing you to the point of contempt for what you’re watching. Instead, Share breathes characters so faintly real that you can almost certainly relate them to people you know… for better or worse.
Similar to my other favorite on this subject, Violation [2020], Share is best viewed alone, in silence, with space to contemplate as you let the credits roll to their finality. While it’s difficult to say I look forward to more experiences like this… I certainly am excited to see what Pippa Bianco brings to the table next.
“Nobody made me, nobody made me get drunk!
– So what! Who gives a s**t what you did? That doesn’t give them the right to do whatever they want to you.”
