parent-teen.com
an
online magazine for families with teens
ARTICLES,
ARCHIVES, &
RESOURCES
Ages
& Stages
Alcohol/Drugs
Arts
& Media
College
Planning
Coping
Driving
Fun
Issues
News
Parent
Pages
Puberty
School
Sex
& Dating
Sports
Volunteering
Working
Your
Body
COLUMNS
College
Prep
Dear
Mike
Freshman
Journal
From
the Backpack
FEEDBACK
What our readers
say
FORUMS
Discussion boards for parents & teens,
plus professional college planning advice. COMING SOON.
CONTRIBUTE
Editorial guidelines
SHOP
Coming soon.
Recommended
books for parents and teens from amazon.com. Your purchases will
help support this site.
Parent-Teen is a publication of:
Parents'
Press
1454 Sixth St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone:
(510) 524-1602
Fax:
(510) 524-0912
e-mail:
ParentsPrs@aol.com
Site contents © copyright 1997-2000 by Parents' Press
You are welcome to make a single (1) copy of any article for your personal, non-commercial use as long as all rights & copyright information remains intact. Please contact us if you are interested in reprinting any material from this site.
10 Great Coming-of-Age Videos for Moms and Teenage
Daughters
By Sandra L. Hughes
Copyright 2000, all rights
reserved
Last year I experimented with using family video watching as a vehicle for both entertainment and lessons about life (Movies with a Message to Watch with Your Preteen).
I challenged myself to find ten movies made for adult audiences which would appeal to my daughter Claire (who was 11 when we began and 12 when we finished) while also delivering an important message. We ended up watching a terrific group of movies, including "Mask" and "Gandhi."
Now that Claire is 13, my focus is teaching her about the experiences that lie ahead as she progresses through her teenage years into adulthood. My dictionary's definition of "coming-of-age" nicely describes the themes I am looking for in the movies I watch with Claire: "the reaching of maturity or the fullness of development."
So far we've watched ten compelling stories of self-discovery and personal growth. All the movies were made for adult rather than teenage audiences, and none is set in an American high school (although one is set at an Australian boarding school). Four are foreign films, and as a group, they offer a broad range of perspectives on the process of growing up. Several features early performances by actresses who are now major stars.
Although some are rated R for sexual content or language, they are only slightly more explicit than the movies for teen audiences which receive PG-13 ratings, and in all of them the sexual content is an integral part of the coming-of-age story.
In alphabetical order, the movies are:
Dirty Dancing, PG-13, 97 min. (1987). If you saw "Dirty Dancing" when it came out, you'll remember it for its great music and dancing, but it also tells a nice coming-of-age story.
At
a borscht belt resort during the summer of 1963, Frances "Baby"
Houseman (Jennifer Grey), and idealistic and naive young woman
who is about to enter college and dreams of one day serving in
the Peace Corps, starts hanging out with the young working-class
men and women who are the "entertainment staff" at
the hotel.
As she becomes romantically involved with the hotel's dance instructor (Patrick Swayze), she learns that the liberalism of the doctor father she has idolized goes only so far. But by movie's end, she has learned to accept her father's imperfections and realizes that he is fundamentally a good man.
Double Happiness, PG-13, 100 min. (1994). With considerable originality, charm, and humor, this movie portrays the struggle between a young Chinese-Canadian woman and her immigrant parents.
Jade wants to be an actress and most emphatically does not want to marry one of the Chinese Canadian young men her parents offer as prospective husbands, but she also lives with the knowledge that her father "disowned" her older brother Winston when he refused to accept his father's authority. How she will resolve or fail to resolve the conflict between her love of her parents and her need to follow what her uncle calls "a different path" provides dramatic tension.
Flirting,
R, 100 min. (1990). This Australian movie set in 1965 features
early performances by Nicole Kidman and Thandie Newton (star
of "M:I-2") as students at a boarding school in rural
Australia.
Newton portrays Thandiwe Adjewa, the worldly daughter of a Ugandan diplomat who is teaching for a year at the nearby University of Canberra. Although her classmates are initially inclined to patronize a student from Africa, Thandiwe soon supplants Nicola Radcliffe (played by Kidman) as the most sophisticated girl at the school.
Danny Embling, a misfit self-styled intellectual at the neighboring boys' school who diligently reads Jean-Paul Sartre, is also enthralled by Thandiwe her family actually knows Sartre and it is she who takes the lead in their mutual sexual initiation.
Imaginary Crimes, PG, 105 min. (1994).Seventeen-year-old Sonia Weiler and her much younger sister Greta have been raised by their con man father Ray (Harvey Keitel) since their mother died eight years ago. As Ray has pursued one get-rich-quick scheme after another, his parenting has been erratic at best, and although Sonia has been a surrogate mother to Greta, she herself has had only her memories of her mother to comfort her.
During Sonia's senior year of high school, Ray's wheeling and dealing finally goes too far and he is arrested for fraud, leading Sonia to confront him with his crimes, both real and imaginary.
Mermaids, PG-13, 111 min. (1990). Similar in plot to "Anywhere But Here," but without the hard edges, "Mermaids" portrays the conflict between a free-spirited single mother (Rachel Fox, played by Cher) and her teenage daughter (Charlotte Fox, played by Winona Ryder).
Whenever life becomes difficult or emotional entanglements threaten, Rachel uproots Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister Kate (Christina Ricci) and moves to another town.
Charlotte yearns for a more stable and conventional life, but when the family moves to Eastport, Massachusetts, she learns that she has more in common with mother mother than she had thought, while her mother begins to overcome her discomfort with stability and commitment.
Muriel's
Wedding, R, 105 min. (1994). In this Australian movie,
Muriel, the plain daughter of a small-time politician who has
labeled her and her siblings "useless," dreams of proving
that she is a success by marrying. But even after Muriel follows
her high school friend Rhonda to Sydney and starts a new life,
self-esteem eludes her, and she agrees to an arranged marriage
with a rich and handsome South African who needs to establish
Australian citizenship.
Enlivened by much humor and the catching music of ABBA, Muriel's Wedding is the story of how Muriel gradually learns to value herself and her friendship with Rhonda and that marriage alone cannot provide her with the sense of self-worth which has escaped her for most of her life.
Mystic Pizza, R, 104 min. (1988). Mystic Pizza was Julia Roberts' first movie, and as such, it has acquired cult status. Although it has less substance than the other movies on this list, it is very entertaining and was one of my daughter's favorites. And there are lessons to be learned from how the romances of each of the three central characters - all working-class Portuguese-American young women in Mystic Connecticut are resolved.
Jojo is reluctant to marry her fisherman boyfriend Bill, fearing that her life will be just like her mother's; Kay is about to attend Yale on scholarship, but learns that an Ivy League degree is no guarantee of good character when she gets involved with a married graduate of Yale; and Daisy (Julia Roberts), Kat's older sister, has been slipping into wilder and more promiscuous behavior in reaction to the limited future she sees for herself, but ironically, learns to value herself only after she gets involved with a rich boy.
Ruby in Paradise, R, 115 min. (1993). This understated film won the 1993 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film Festival.
Ashley Judd stars as ruby, a young woman from the mountains of Tennessee who heads for Panama City (popularly known as the "Redneck Riviera"), the scene of a childhood vacation, after her mother dies. As she comments, she "got out of town without getting pregnant or beat up that's saying a lot."
Although at times self-consciously poetic, the movie movingly portrays Ruby's search for a better life. As she struggles to build an independent life (along the way rejecting two suitors who offer her emotional and material security, but not what she is really looking for), she learns lessons in "how to survive with your soul intact."
Secrets & Lies, R, 142 min. (1996). Hortense is a 20-something black professional living in London, the adopted child of middle class immigrants from Barbados. When her adoptive mother dies, Hortense decides to search for her birth mother and is shocked to discover that she is the child of a well-meaning but pathetic working class white woman (superbly played by Brenda Blythen, who received the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival).
With his characteristic raw documentary-like style, English director Mike Lynch tells the engrossing story of Hortense's adjustment to her newly discovered and quite dysfunctional birth family, and of their adjustment to her.
Selena,
PG, 130 min. (1997). In another movie with lots of great music,
Jennifer Lopez plays the young Tejano singer who was tragically
killed by a fan just as she was about to break through as a cross-over
recording artist.
Although for the most part a pretty lightweight story, the dramatic tension in the movie as in "Double Happiness" is provided by Selena's struggles with her traditional immigrant father Edward James Olmos, who acts as her manager. Selena's father, however, is much better able to surrender authority and accept his daughter's choices about career and marriage, and the film effectively conveys how Selena's relationship with her close-knit family ultimately strengthens rather than stifles her.
A final note: Claire went into this second movie project somewhat reluctantly, but by the end, she was asked me when we were going to watch another movie. So to get your daughter hooked on the idea, start with "Mystic Pizza," "Dirty Dancing," or "Selena," and then introduce one of the more serious movies, like "Imaginary Crimes" or "Ruby in Paradise."
| For Sandra Hughes' list of great videos for mothers and younger daughters (11-13 years) to share, CLICK HERE. |
Home | About Us | Ages & Stages | Alcohol/Drugs | Arts & Media | College Planning | College Prep column | Coping | Dear Mike | Driving | Feedback | Freshman Journal | From the Backpack | Fun | Issues | News | Parent Pages | Puberty | School |Sex & Dating | Sports | Volunteering | Working | Your Body | Advertise | Contribute | E-mail Us