Oliver Tate is the kind of teenager I wish I could go back in time and be more like. He has the ability to take stock of his adolescence with the perspective of an adult. "None of this will matter when I'm 38" is something of a mantra to get him through the tumult of dating and bullying. Still, his mastery of SAT words and intellectual influences, precisely art directed to include Alain Deloin, Woody Allen, Gunter Grass, Freidrich Nietzche and Carl Dreyer, can't help him with the major problem he faces: his parents may be breaking up.
Mom, Sally Hawkins, is a tad fastidious and Dad, the always amazing Noah Taylor, is mild to the point of being nearly catatonic.
When Mom's absurd ex-flame (now a self-help guru preaching the power of the color wheel played by Paddy Considine) moves nearby, trouble brews.
Parallel to this, Oliver actually starts making time with the somewhat elusive Jordana, a girl not quite popular enough to be a challenge, but mysterious enough to turn Oliver's world completely upside down.
These two conflicts (and, yes, first girlfriends are a conflict) play themselves out simultaneously, in an blithe and original manner. It is a first person picture, with rapid cutting and blasts of imagination, placing its aesthetic ADD somewhere between Billy Liar and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
I've name-dropped Rushmore in the title and I feel a little guilty about that. During the screening I scribbled "Wes Anderson influence" in my notes, and some of the music cuts and inter-titles reminded me of Peter Greenaway, but in time I grew to realize that Submarine is doing its own thing.
Quirky can kill your movie. For every Ghost World there's a Garden State. Submarine does it right. Its observations are sharp (why is the word "gaylord" so funny?) the performances and editing are tight and the essence of purity and youth is prevalent in every scene. It is a real winner, and bound to delight folks who live for touching, adorable indies about youth.
