Blue My Mind

I wasn't quite sure how to categorize this film while watching it. As most fairytales go, there are some dark elements. There are hopeful themes, too. Overall this is different enough to be interesting and I found the cinematography in various scenes to be very enchanting.

Blue My Mind follows Mia, a teenage girl, as she tries to find her place among the popular students in school while facing body transformations that question her identity in every way.

A fairy tale coming-of-age that finds meaning in the examination of identity in the most basic and natural sense with a dosis of body horror that turns its dream-like quality into a nightmarish tale of teen drama.

The movie's greatest asset is Luna Wedler's performance as Mia, a protagonist who conveys the often found dichotomy of teenage ache for emancipation while at the same time requiring the safe haven of childhood.

I think, the movie tried to explore the themes: "being yourselves" or "embracing yourselves with all your oddities" or "finding how special you are".

It is an interesting film, but leaves you confused at the end; all because one shot, I think, has gone wrong. The point is, the movie follows a grounded-realistic approach (not a surreal one). So, you expect the movie to give you enough information to build a believable world in which the story takes place. The problem is not with the believability, but with the incomplete information. So, at the end, you are left feeling that there is something missing.

This could have been fixed with the very first shot of the movie, in which it could have shown a new born lying on the beach crying, with no traces of any human around her. This would have raised the question, "who left her there?" or "where did she come from?". As these questions were quite satisfactorily answered in the movie, you would've felt that everything fell in place (including the theme). The parents' characters need a little development though.

Sad and lovley... Truly not for the masses. Your average Joe will not like or get this at all.

After watching this film, I was very much reminded of that other intense, coming-of-age girlhood drama, Thirteen. Both films feature a young protagonist who, in the midst of trying to navigate adolescence amidst loving but oblivious parents, get sucked into the depravities of underage drinking, substance abuse, promiscuity, self-harm and the like. The scenes of Mia trying to find an in with the cool crowd is immediately familiar to Thirteen's Tracy trying to cozy up to the wild Evie. If the film had a mood board, I could also see the similarly named Fish Tank (maybe even Pixar's latest, Turning Red, could be the Disney-fied version of this story), or the French film Water Lilies, as inspirations.

As a metaphor for the turbulence of the teen years, shape-shifting stories, and mermaids in particular, are a very interesting idea. But not enough is done with it in Blue My Mind. I wanted to know if Mia had prior suspicions about her origins, or if she just started having inklings that she is not like others. We also don't get much insight into some of Mia's decisions other than her being driven by hormones. Some of the plot mechanics were also improbable, notably Mia's parents leaving her at home alone despite worrying changes in her behavior.

I did like how the film avoided falling into some cliches, particularly with the Gianna character who is at first introduced as the sexually precocious "bad influence"-type. Also the cinematography is pretty striking with its palette of blues. Overall, this is definitely a film that leaves an impression on you with its vividly startling imagery. I would have liked it even more had it spent more time developing Mia's thinly sketched parents, or her relationship with Gianna, and gave Mia more of a complex, defiant send-off.