As a teenager, there are many depictions of teenage sexuality that I find have followed their own successful formula for so long that they fail to depict modern adolescent sexuality accurately. Bang Gang is indeed, as it is billed as, a "modern love story". In particular, the impact of social media on the psyches and voyeuristic attitudes of my generation are perfectly encompassed. Within director Eva Husson's spectacle, there are familiar themes: the need to be wanted, to be set apart from the herd, the loneliness that comes with attaining your fantasies and finding that they are not enough (read: the scene in which Alex, high on vice, stumbles completely naked out to the pool-where teenagers are copulating and filming it all on camera for online distribution-and plunges in, attempting to shut everything out). As a teenager, there was always a certain orgiastic essence to house parties, people sneaking off to bathrooms and guest bedrooms to hook up, spin the bottle and escalating dares, so that the possibilities of such an event happening, as it did in real life, do not seem far-fetched. The imagery and cinematography of the movie is spectacular. The control of light and palette is exquisite, so that a normally vulgar tableau-consider Harmony Korine's "Kids", all grit and no softness-is rendered soft and ambient. There are some shots that could come straight out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. And maybe that's what's so beautiful about this movie; youth isn't some dispensable, ephemeral quantity of life, regardless of its course, youth does guide our lives, and teaches us that to be happy, you have to risk being hurt.
