Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

Dana proposes a Ferris v. Angel contest: Which of them will “become a woman by the end of the summer”? Whoever loses their virginity first wins, and everyone takes sides. Ferris selects counselor Gary, seeks to seduce him with mature overtures — a late-night visit to his cabin in her nightgown, suggesting she needs an understanding ear for her problems, How about a glass of wine , she proposes, How about that Shakespeare? — until he bemusedly, but kindly, shuts her down. There is no question, for him, that she is still a child — although, he reassures, if she were twenty-one, he’d probably fall madly in love with her. And she prances away across the lawn in her embroidered nightgown, validated and relieved, happy to linger a while longer in the sexless safety of her star-crossed-lovers dreams.

But this is really Angel’s story; she sets her sights on Randy (Matt Dillon), a kid from the boys’ camp across the lake — and “sets her sights on” is the right phrase, for Little Darlings is the rare film to delight in the female gaze; when Angel meets Randy, the camera lingers, from her point of view, on his alabaster skin and pomegranate lips, the slope of his sculpted muscles, the snug fit of his jeans. He is much prettier than she is, and she is perfectly happy to gaze upon him with us, to share the visual feast of this lovely boy. But their first “date,” an illicit hookup in some kind of barn, shakes her composure. She wants to desire, and to be desired, and she is terrified at the unfamiliar reality of both. She cannot bring herself to undress; she picks a fight until he — confused himself, he is also only fifteen — tells her off, snaps she is not even his type, “a kid your age!” She feels wounded, in spite of her anxiety. “I’m not sexy to you, am I?” she asks, again seeking the paradox of a safe rejection and a validation of sexual allure, all at once.

Their second date begins with more promise; Randy feels terrible for having been unkind, he is all sincere boyish patience, is authentically tender and sweet. Even the barn seems romantic now, a hidden love nest in the darkling rain. When Angel, trembling, confesses she is scared, he tells her he is, too.

ANGEL

Don’t laugh. . right now, do you care about me, a little?

And in answer he kisses her, tenderly and sweetly, and Yes , we think, this is perfect, the perfect moment, perfect boy — did you see those lips? — this is it, go for it! We are all Team Angel; win that contest!

But we skip ahead, to the aftermath. And it is a painful aftermath to see. For all the tender sweetness, this was not a good thing. Angel and Randy are not curled up like Veronese lovers in a shared, newfound physical intimacy, to a melodic Nino Rota score; they are on opposite sides of the barn, pulling their clothes back on in stunned silence, and Angel’s face — Kristy McNichol is heartbreaking in this scene — is profoundly sad.

ANGEL

It wasn’t what I thought it would be. . God, it was so personal . Like you could see right through me. . Making love is. . it’s different from what I thought it was going to be like. .

He finally guesses it was her first time. “Christ, why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.

ANGEL

I thought it would turn you off. Virgins are weird, right?

He tells her she’s beautiful, that he thinks he loves her. But she is the wise one: “You don’t have to,” she tells him. Love won’t change what just happened between them — or what didn’t happen.

ANGEL

God, I feel so lonesome. .

she says, although he is standing right next to her, fully present, trying to understand her feelings, to fuse and connect and share. A beautiful, sensitive boy, a romantic summer night in a barn, an experience she wanted to find, have, make happen — and still. She has misjudged the power of sex, not just to pleasure, fulfill, create intimacy, but its equally powerful opposite: Sex as pathway to a lonely emotional emptiness. Back with her cabinmates, Angel lies, tells them nothing happened, willingly loses that contest; it is so personal, it isn’t something to trade in for a victor’s sash and tiara, a false-god title, a cheap trophy to display on the mantel. “Oh, it was nothing, still is nothing,” her mother had told her earlier, in response to Angel’s tentative inquiry about sex, what it’s like and what it all means. But now, at the end of the film, wise Angel confronts her: “What’s this crap about sex being nothing ?” she lectures; it is something, or at least has the possibility to be something, and she knows that now. She has lost the contest but won that insight.

Little Darlings is also unusual in its focus on the female experience of sexual awakening. Most loss-of-innocence movies are all about the boys, the ill-timed and indiscriminate hard-ons, the premature ejaculations and locker room ribbing played for snickery comedy. But the experience of allowing another human being to enter your body is an especially vulnerable one, and Little Darlings is the only movie I had seen, to date — or perhaps have ever seen — that is willing to treat that with the respect it deserves. (While still being hilariously funny — food fight! Stealing a condom dispenser from a gas station bathroom! Cynthia Nixon as a flower child!) The movie is not antisex — it simply asks that we appreciate the power and potential of sex.

And it is hugely impactful on me. A summer later, at sixteen, I find myself with my first real boyfriend, my own beautiful and sensitive boy I feel I could gaze upon forever. He is more man than boy, actually, he has hit six feet and shaves every day, has a torso that widens to a glorious peach-skin capital V ; he is the one in our group we all — boys and girls, gay and straight alike — turn to for erotic leadership in our pack-wolf craving for a whiff of actual grown-up Sex. My friends and I have begun obsessing over who will lose her virginity first, replicating discussions from a few years earlier about who would be the first to get her period, and, in doing so, have created a de facto contest of our own, an unofficial Virginity Sweepstakes. And here this sexy, delicious boy has turned his gaze upon me . I cannot believe my good fortune. Surely he is the one, right? The guy I will lose it to? (A phrase I dislike — I don’t want to lose anything; I want to find something, a transcendently new thing to value, about boys, about bodies, about life, about myself.)

The first time he kisses me — sitting alone on the floor together at one of those rumpus-room parties, but with higher stakes, now, with beer replacing fruit punch and no one’s parents even bothering to be home to watch over us anymore, and Bread singing “ I want to make it with you ” on the stereo — I feel my first jolt of desire at another person’s touch, my first startling crotch-throb, the first time I ever feel myself go swollen and heated and wet. And that begins a long summer, at the beach, in our cars, in our own homes undisturbed by absent or distracted parents (or any busybody Nurse), in ongoing battle over jean zippers and shirt buttons and hormonal irreconcilability. I spend the summer panting and moaning with lust, but also squirming away at the last second from his curious hands and mouth, his eager hips. I am terrified, and I do not know why, or of what. What am I waiting for, I wonder, someone sweeter, cuter, sexier , more popular? I have grabbed the brass-ring boyfriend, and this is a good guy who will, I’m pretty sure, tell me afterward I am beautiful, that he thinks he might love me, even if only out of good manners. But. . does he care about me, a little . .? Do I even care about him ? I can’t really know, and he probably doesn’t know, either. We are sixteen, and our emotions are obscured by that swollen wet heat.