Writer/director Elizabeth Wood remembers the day her parents used the provocative 1995 film Kids as a “cautionary tale” to discourage risky behavior. It backfired. Wood believes Kids actually “encouraged” her “to be worse behaved.”
“Drugs! Sex! Cool! The danger of it was very appealing,” she told Vice.
So now, as a responsible adult, Wood is bringing us White Girl, the amped up 21st century edition of Kids. She even teamed up with Kids producer Christine Vachon to create the movie that Variety Chief Film Critic Peter Debruge called a “debauched portrait” marked by “wall-to-wall drugs and depravity.” But for Wood, it’s personal. The film is also semi-autobiographical, since it’s based on her own wild misadventures as a college sophomore.
DeBruge was generally critical in his assessment of the film, but there was one aspect that made it bearable for him: knowing that there was “a bold female helmer behind the camera.” Because debauchery should have no glass ceiling, right? But the sex and drugs are just vehicles to explore the issues liberals really care about.
“Luckily, most people were able to see past the sexuality and see that this film engages with conversations about race, privilege and gender,” Wood said, according to USA Today.
Bustle’s Sage Young agreed, calling “White Girl” an “aggressive exploration” of those hot button issues. In a Rolling Stone review, Tim Grierson teased out protagonist Leah’s “privilege,” writing that viewers “never forget that she’s somewhat insulated from danger because of her skin color.” This was very intentional on Wood’s part. The filmmaker recalled a class she took on whiteness, saying “thank God it happened to me. Everyone needs that experience.”
From the gender angle, Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir commented that “women are still judged differently for pursuing heedless pleasure and violating the moral code” than their male counterparts are. The film, he felt, addressed the controversial issue of “the nature of female power.”
According to The Huffington Post, Wood agreed: “I’ve been surprised and encouraged by how many women have come up to me of all ages and backgrounds and whispered to me that they were so glad to see representation of female sexuality that they felt like they could never really share, the kinds of things that had happened that you’re not really allowed to talk about.” Yet, Wood disagreed that the sex was there for “shock value.” “I think it’s fairly authentic to many female experiences,” she argued.
Considering that the protagonist is raped and snorts cocaine off of a man’s penis, Wood’s words – which appear to be serious – are rather disturbing.
