USA,
1995, 82 min
Shown in 1995
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jennifer Montgomery
- prod
-
Jennifer Montgomery
- scr
-
Jennifer Montgomery
- cam
-
Jennifer Montgomery
- editor
-
Jennifer Montgomery
- cast
-
Caitlin Grace McDonnell, Duncan Hannah, Coles Burroughs
-
COMMENTS
Jennifer Montgomery in person.
Jennifer Montgomery’s (Home Avenue, Age 12; Love with a Little “l”) first feature-length film is a low-budget recreation of her affair as a 14-year-old girl with a 28-year-old photographer. Fifteen years later, she was re-involved when he stood accused of being a child pornographer in a case that generated much publicity and debate. The majority of the film is set in an East Coast boarding school where John Goddard (Duncan Hannah) is Jennifer’s (Caitlin Grace McDonnell) dorm head. He photographs her and, as Montgomery muses in the present-day voiceover, she watches him watching her. The roles of artist and model undergo complex permutations within the narrative and through the making of the film. At age 14, Jennifer “chooses” John to lose her virginity to; now she chooses him as the subject of her film. He is now her model, used to raise questions about consent, questions about who acts on whom in both relationships and art. In her rendition, the Jennifer and John of the past are purposefully awkward and unpolished, their relationship emerging through unfocused conversations and unreflected-upon actions. Overlaid is Montgomery’s probing, intelligent voiceover; having reached the age of consent, she exposes the past in a complex, questioning manner.
—Kathy Geritz
FACTOID #176
Hordes of screaming teenagers were fascinated with the Rolling Stones, but so were influential imagemakers Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Frank. The SFIFF has screened three different films with the Rolling Stones as the main subject: Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil (SFIFF 1972), Frank’s Cocksucker Blues (SFIFF 1998) and the IMAX documentary At the Max (SFIFF 1991).
