Only the Young & Tchoupitoulas

From now on, any directors, producers, screenwriters or actors thinking about doing a movie about young people should be made to watch this delightful double feature from Oscilloscope Laboratories. The films are very different in style and tone, but they share a common thread that most teen movie makers don’t – they don’t condescend or talk down to their subjects or their audience. As a result, they create an excruciatingly honest portrait of what it’s like to be young. Only the Young tells the story of three teens living in a small California desert town and the day to day struggle they go through just to feel comfortable in their own skin living in a world that seems to want nothing to do with them. The interaction between the teens is fascinating to watch, thanks to the ‘fly on the wall’ perspective of the film which lets them be themselves without playing to the audience or to the directors’ idea of what the audience wants. In Tchoupitoulas, we follow three brothers on a very different kind of late night adventure through the French Quarter of New Orleans. The film manages to find a fresh way to look at the city by painting everything the boys see with a sense of wonder that makes even the seediest aspects of the city shine like gold.