If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your teenage self? Presumably to not waste your formative years acting entirely reckless and sulking over daily minutiae that is forgotten a week later. “Necktie Youth,” directed by 23-year-old South African filmmaker Sibs Shongwe-La Mer, depicts teenagers steering clear of any authoritative advice or hope for their future selves. The film is a contemporary look inside the lives of overly privileged, unhappy youth living in the richest suburb of South Africa.
‘Necktie Youth’ depicts a modern day cultural dystopia of kids living in a suburban fishbowl consisting of too much money, drugs, sex and technology. What separates it from other coming of age dramas like ‘Kids’ and ‘Thirteen’ is the further exploration of a country in transit—caught between racial politics and a growing social divide—figuring out its place in the post-apartheid era. Mer describes the film as an ode to his friends: “I wrote the film from the perspective of the life I was living, and the friends I was seeing.”
A local girl live-streaming her suicide serves as the film’s catalyst for a rotating narrative sequence of her peers reacting in the immediate aftermath. As a society, it can be hard to reach out to someone who’s experienced a personal tragedy whether you know them intimately or moderately. Cut to self-indulgent, hormone-infused versions riding around in expensive cars, hopped up on too many pills, and it becomes a blistering series of destructive escapism.
The film captures stark black-and-white shots of suburbia in Johannesburg, paired with its drugged-fueled visualizations. Color occurs solely with brief shots of home video footage. “The color bits were meant to reflect a remembrance of a better time in our country’s history, with Mandela,” says Mer. “These kids are reflecting onto this time in South Africa where everything was full of possibility, before everything became sterile.”
Mer’s debut feature takes itself very seriously with dialogue that is overly affected at worst and honest at best. In one of the film’s more cringe-worthy scenes, viewers witness a kid who overdoses, being dumped on the side of the road by his panicky, high friends. A car drives by slowly before continuing onwards. The casualty of the act produces a feeling of identifiable uneasiness. In contrast, the common thread with these detached youth is that they are unable to soberly navigate their creeping discontent, and all signs point to trouble.
“If we don’t find a way to communicate, we’re completely lost. I hope that the younger generation sees that they’re not alone, and the older generation sees the trouble in it,” says Mer, referring to “Necktie Youth” as a film of consequence. “Hopefully a conversation between the two emerges, and people don’t have to kill themselves.”
That burden of disillusionment and loneliness? It’s gone global.
“Necktie Youth” screened at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently looking for a U.S. distributor.
Review by Sandy Chung. You can follow her on Twitter @sndychng.
