What starts out as a cheeky, purposefully cringe reliving of one’s adolescent nightmares and neuroses slowly turns into a deeper, meaningful examination of the human condition in documentarian Cecilia Aldarondo’s amusingly personal You Were My First Boyfriend.
The subject of teasing and racist slurs throughout school (as a result of being Puerto Rican), Cecilia seizes upon the chance to attend her high school reunion and confront some of her biggest tormentors to their faces. She also wants to tell her first ever crush, Joel, how much a single dance with him meant to her, even though the’ve scarcely interacted before and despite the fact that the action in question might’ve actually been a prank perpetrated by some mean girls.
Before Aldarondo (who directed past Hot Docs selection Landfall) can go too far down the rabbit hole of unrequited love, You Were My First Boyfriend becomes a more ambitious form of “elaborate psychotherapy,” as the filmmaker puts it. She casts herself alongside her adult partner and younger actors in recreations of pop culture signposts and meaningful life moments. Is it all a bit silly and indulgent? Perhaps, but by putting herself out there and allowing herself to be endearingly silly and vulnerable, Aldarondo and co-director Sarah Enid Hagey broach bigger questions about the baggage we carry with us from childhood into adulthood.
You Were My First Boyfriend asks existential questions about the reliability of memory, and why people tend on to things that are often linked to hurtful or awkward memories. It looks at what it’s like growing up middle class in a largely well-to-do suburb, living in the shadow of more popular and conventionally attractive siblings, and what it takes to confront the harsh truth that you’ve also been cruel or unkind to someone in the past.
You Were My First Boyfriend is a film for the emotional masochist buried within us all, and following Beef and the second season of Yellowjackets, it also proves that the Tori Amos renaissance is in wonderfully full effect, and I am absolutely here for this cultural turn of events.
Thursday, April 27, 2023 – 6:15 pm – TIFF Bell Lightbox 3
Sunday, April 30, 2023 – 9:15 pm – TIFF Bell Lightbox 1
You Were My First Boyfriend is due to air on HBO later this year.
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