It's often little things that take a screenplay, an acting performance, or both to the next level. In So Damn Easy Going, there's a moment when the movie's teenage protagonist Joanna - already reeling emotionally from a day navigated without her ADHD medication - is hit between the eyes with the epiphany that she has feelings for the new girl in school, Audrey. Nikki Hanseblad, in a magnetically charismatic screen debut surely portending of great things to come, so perfectly conveys a mix of charged realization and stubborn confusion. All with a simple look.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD myself, I can empathize by experience with anyone suffering from a condition that basically strips away your ability to filter, prioritize or organize in any way the myriad issues, tasks and problems that come your way in an average day. It can cause others to think of you as scatterbrained, disorganized, incapable, even uncaring (or YOU THINK it is causing others to think of you this way).
From a similar perspective I applaud the stroke of genius in using ADHD as one of the structural lynchpins from which to develop Joanna's story arc. Whether by design or not, So Damn Easy Going hints at a position some take on ADHD medication, namely that to fight the symptoms of the condition it must "dumb down" or desensitize the patient to external stimuli. In the context of the screenplay, one might ask perhaps whether it is only Joanna's forced vacation from her medication that allows her to start working through the issues she was facing in her home life. Confronting issues is hard, it's messy, it's awkward. If you never face them, though - if you desensitize yourself to them - they will bloat inside you, find fault lines, and one day break you into pieces. The off-her-meds Joanna is certainly awkward and messy, but she's moving forward, she's healing, she's learning the type of person she really wants to be.
The movie's highly accurate and insightful depiction of the world of an ADHD sufferer (the flashing lightbulbs, the respite provided by swimming - both brilliant) are buttressed by a tight story structure and some fine supporting performances, notably from Shanti Roney as Joanna's father and Melina Paukkonen (also in an impressive debut appearance) as Audrey. Hanseblad and Paukkonen have chemistry aplenty on screen and the development of their relationship, the ups and the downs, never seems forced, a testimony I suspect to much work behind the scenes and some fine directing work from Christoffer Sandler, who also wrote the screenplay.
Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to all those involved in the making of So Damn Easy Going is that watching the movie made me want to do my own due diligence "maintenance check" on whether I am being as open to all life's possibilities as I should be. I'm a lot older than Joanna but I'd like to think it's never too late to truly figure out what type of person you are, and to BE that person with all your heart. < Cue lightbulb flash >.
