The hellish horrors and swelling triumphs of being 13 are mostly brought to the screen with a detached gloss, the beats of cinematic adolescence rarely lining up with those experienced in real life. In Eighth Grade, comedian Bo Burnham’s wonderful directorial debut, there’s a refreshing avoidance of such artifice, the former YouTuber’s striking big-screen calling card playing out more like a documentary than a standard coming-of-age movie.
Words are stumbled over, teenage dialogue borders on inane and the performances are almost entirely naturalistic yet Burnham still guides his film with a distinctive, cinematic hand. It feels real without ever meandering, the work of a skilled curator showcasing his impressive knowledge of the teenage psyche.
Burnham’s co-author of sorts is Elsie Fisher, whose lead performance is as integral to the film’s success as his direction. She plays Kayla, a girl whose online presence as a confident, advice-spouting vlogger is wildly at odds with who she is at school: a loner who struggles to connect with those around her. It’s not through lack of trying, though, and in her final days of middle school, she’s determined to make progress with the girls who look down on her and the boys who don’t even look at her before moving on to a major new phase in her life.
The story of an awkward 13-year-old girl’s final days of middle school might seem like an odd fit for a male comedian’s directorial debut and at a time when we’re still seeing so many female narratives told through a male lens, it could appear as slightly regressive, especially after Greta Gerwig’s richly observed Lady Bird. But 27-year-old Burnham’s recent past as a viral teen star (since the age of 16, his videos have accrued more than 228m views), has gifted him with firsthand knowledge of what it is like to grow up online and there’s authenticity infused throughout.
For Kayla, access to social media allows her to feel superficially connected but being far removed from anything resembling a real social circle means that it can also feel frustrating, the possibility of popularity literally at her fingertips. There’s an acute awareness of the different roles played at that age, depending on the space. On YouTube, Kayla is confident and self-assured, at school she’s nervous and quiet and with her father, she’s irritable and rude. There’s nuance not just in Kayla’s characterization but also in the events that unfold around her.
For much of the film, there’s an excruciating focus on the difficulties she encounters, from an uncomfortable pool party to a queasily well-performed scene of harassment, but Burnham avoids an excess of cruelty. This isn’t Welcome to the Dollhouse. He peppers the film with rare, buoyant moments of joy that jump out that much further because they feel so deserved. At one point Kayla is befriended by an older girl, and I found myself as giddily excited as her, a relatively simple life event transformed into a crowd-pleasing victory.
Burnham often accompanies moments of extreme emotion, good and bad, with unexpected bursts of EDM, a decision that might sound intrusive but in practice is extremely effective. A bathroom outfit change suddenly evokes palm-sweating terror while Kayla glancing at her disaffected crush across the classroom is transformed into an earth-shaking awareness of attraction. It’s a nifty way of conveying the scale of events that might seem mundane on the surface and helps to tune us into Kayla’s wavelength for the duration. She’s in every scene and our intense investment in her day-to-day is down to a really quite exceptional performance from Fisher.
She’s not exactly an unknown (her previous credits include voice work in the Despicable Me franchise) but it feels like she’s an accidental discovery, as if this role was created for her. It’s an uncomfortably real turn, her social anxiety proving horribly familiar to anyone who’s felt out of place, and Burnham’s script never betrays her, refusing to resort to convention in the final act. He understands that victories are small, changes are slow and the future is uncertain and his defiance of expectation leads to a far more satisfying experience. Eighth Grade isn’t easy, both on screen and in life, but it’s a film that should be a rite of passage for all, no matter the age.
- Eighth Grade is released in the US on 13 July with a UK date yet to be announced
