RIPE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Trimark) Starring: Monica Keena, Daisy Eagan, Gordon Currie, Ron Brice, Karen Lynn Gorney. Screenplay: Mo Ogrodnik. Producers: Suzy Landa, Tom Razzano. Director: Mo Ogrodnik. MPAA Rating: Unrated (profanity, sexual situations, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The most depressing thing about RIPE is that you can spot the core of emotional honesty buried beneath the layers of lurid melodrama and clunky symbolism. While male coming-of-age stories litter the film landscape like LOST WORLD ticket stubs on a multiplex floor, film-makers appear far more uncomfortable with tackling the sexual awakening of girls. That was reason alone to hope for the best from Mo Ogrodnik's tale of 14-year-old fraternal twins Rosie (Daisy Eagan) and Violet (Monica Keena), who survive a car crash which claims the lives of their parents then set off alone on a road of discovery. That road finds them stowing on the truck of groundskeeper-cum-handyman Pete (Gordon Currie) into a military base, where they hope to hide out until their faces are no longer on every newspaper. The two girls find themselves confronted there with unfamiliar feelings, to which each responds in a different but equally destructive way.
Writer/director Ogrodinik opted to frame RIPE as a sort of surreal cautionary tale, a KIDS-like warning on the perils of unsupervised youth. The girls' parents appear in flashback just long enough to make it clear that Rosie and Violet had a dysfunctional childhood (Daddy was fond of a little game involving a shotgun and hiding out in the closet), while the army base leadership looks about as effectual as something out of McHALE'S NAVY. There is an absurdity to the things the girls get away with, from shoplifting to wandering through an ammunition shed, but that absurdity is probably part of Ogrodnik's point. It is the foundation for a compelling tale of adolescent traumas, as a pair of troubled teenagers face the changes in their lives and their bodies without the benefit of adult counsel. If anything, RIPE may be a feature length public service message on the importance of sex education.
It is here that the surrealism and metaphorical heavy-handedness squash RIPE like a rotting pomegranate. Rosie and Violet (named as flowers-about-to-bloom with kick-your-butt-through-your-brainpan subtlety) represent widely divergent reactions to the first flush of sexual awareness, but that is all they ever become: representations. Real-life 14-year-olds Eagan and Keena (when was the last time you saw a high school student playing a high school student?) do impressive work with extremely difficult material, but it is not enough to create characters which are written as types. Nothing in RIPE feels authentic; it is a parade of numbingly obvious fore-shadowing and ridiculous situations which shift the emphasis from sensitive observation to spectacle. This shift lends an unnecessary sleaziness to scenes of masturbation and loss of virginity which might have been effective if the situations felt natural.
The shock value and controversy of RIPE may be good for box office, but they're bad for narrative truth. A less self-consciously "provocative" RIPE could have been the kind of honest drama which a mother and daughter could share and learn from together. Instead, this RIPE will likely become more popular at the corner video store with middle-aged men in trenchcoats.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 flower children: 3.
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