MONKEY BARS: A Sidling, Unsettling Step Away From Girlhood

Teenage years are tough. Every generation has its own take on what it means to be a teenager and while many films are usually filled with dreamy, rockin’ nostalgia of that rite of passage where you transition from kid to what you think is an adult, oftentimes it can just be a near-nightmare you’ve yet to realize is lucid.

With Monkey Bars, a short film written and directed by Jacqueline Xerri, the void between dream and nightmare coalesce when three 14-year-old girls hang out with some older boys under a blanket of Four Lokos and a cold, cruising night. Monkey Bars does a fantastic job at capturing that feeling of stepping into a new world and leaving behind an old one, of passing that threshold where the monkey bars used to be a place for play but are now a place to push your personal boundaries with a dangerous boy.

Leaving Girlhood

Starring Sofia Popol as Maggie, a 14-year-old with braces, who enjoys goofing off with her two best friends Shea (played by Shea Bryant) and Courtney (Hereditary‘s Milly Shapiro) in and around a grocery store as they all wear their matching Ugg boots and North Face jackets. They video themselves being just, like, so random when, suddenly, two older boys drinking in the parking lot call them over. It turns out that Shea, the friend who’s a little bit more “mature” than Maggie and Courtney, knows one of the boys as Pete (Christopher Michael Inman) from Facebook. Anxiety sets in as the camera focuses on Pete casually cutting up a stuffed animal and the girls seem nervous, but elated when they are invited to hang out later that night.

Throughout the short film, there are intermittent cuts to Maggie as an even littler girl playing on a jungle gym in a park; she’s free-spirited, curious, and unafraid to jump and spin as she plays. As teenage Maggie puts on too much blue eyeshadow (no Youtube tutorials for these girls!) and scrolls through Pete’s Facebook profile, we see that she and her friends are tentatively excited for their big night, ignoring the signs of the danger that’s ahead.

The night is filled with awkward smiles met with bothered, intense stares as Maggie tries to get to know Pete as she gets drunk on Four Lokos and sinks further and further into the unknown. Shea breaks away from the pack with a boy in the group she seems to know very well and Courtney is left as the awkward friend with her hair curled, her earrings hooped, and her hands quietly placed in her jacket pockets. Shapiro‘s understated take on the friend who joins the party but treats it as a waiting room, feels like a relief, even as she’s sitting next to the guy the others pick on and turkey tap from time to time.

As Maggie tries to get closer to Pete, he takes advantage of the fact that she clearly likes him despite his seeming disinterest intercut with intense, calculating looks throughout the evening: he tells her how fucked up he is, knowing that naive girls who put on pink lip gloss and drunkenly, perilously walk on top of the monkey bars to follow troubled boys like him will take the bait and continue to go wherever he, his bottle of liquor, and his car will take them. YOLO, baby, YOLO.

Conclusion

Xerri‘s unsettling coming-of-age story brings out intense feelings of familiarity, possible regret, and the last look a teen girl takes before she steps towards a future where she doesn’t know and doesn’t want to care what a guy with a switchblade is going to do. The performances by the young actors, particularly Inman as Pete, the destructive male siren with a driver’s license, are a special kind of authenticity and optimism that Xerri expertly procures with her direction. Along with its atmospheric, evocative score that adds to the anxiety of its scenes, Monkey Bars has some slick, aching editing work and cinematography that highlights the feelings of an uncontrollable night. It’s a must-see short film that will leave you wanting to be a rescuer for Maggie, to keep her as the child that swings to and fro, but who can save the girls who feel mature and invincible, not seeing that they’re maybe not ready to test that feeling?

What do you think of Monkey Bars? What would you do if you were Maggie and her friends? Please let us know in the comments below.

Monkey Bars will be available for free at nobudge.com on March 12th, 2021