Showing @ Cineworld, Edinburgh Mon 23 & Sun 29 Jun
Leah Meyerhoff / USA / 2014 / 80 mins
The teenage years can usually be defined by their discomfort: surging hormones, changing bodies, social awkwardness. No doubt the rose-tinted spectacles so many adults don to recall their formative years, exist precisely because it is such a difficult time.
Shy, imaginative Davina (Natalia Dyer) has it worse than most. She has spent her entire life caring for her disabled mother and her only respite comes in the form of fairytale daydreams. She covers her environment in flowers, feathers and fairy lights and dresses in frilly doll-like dresses. But Davina’s candy-coloured fantasies take on a distinctly darker hue when she meets Sterling (Peter Vack), a moody skateboarder who, at Davina’s own request, soon whisks her away on a spontaneous road trip.
I Believe in Unicorns is beautifully rendered with charming stop-motion animation, lavish fantasy sequences and the same washed-out tones of a long-forgotten Polaroid. Dyer is perfectly cast as the naive heroine who longs to escape the drudgery of her life. Vack’s bad boy is likely to prove as abrasive to older, wiser viewers as he is irresistible to teen girls. It would appear that director Leah Meyerhoff remembers her adolescence clearly, and her modern fable warns against the perils of that most basic teenaged emotion: the desire to be anywhere at all rather than where you are.
Showing as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014