"Speak" Review

1)   I watched the movie Speak with Kristen Stewart over the weekend. I have to say that although it was extremely sad, I enjoyed it thoroughly. She may have even redeemed herself from her agonizingly long fling with a sparkly vampire. She was pretty good in the Runaways too, I have to admit. In this movie she played someone who I thought I could relate to much more, that is a very angsty girl in high school. I soon realized that aside from our artistic inclination; me and this chick didn’t have a whole lot in common. This film follows the main character Melinda Sordino, played by Stewart, as she struggles through her first year of high school after being raped by a senior student. She finds solace in art with the help of a charismatic teacher, but for most of the movie she doesn’t really talk much, hence the title. She is experiencing an inner battle with herself to finally tell someone what happened to her and the movie closes with her revealing the tale to her concerned mother. The plot itself wasn’t extremely interesting. It followed a thirteen year old girl as she went to school and was made fun of, but everyone has seen that. The character development was important. We see her break free. She finally rises from the ashes of this trauma in the end after being in a state of mind where she felt completely alone.

2)   The film had a lot of close ups of the characters face. It panned into her sad expressions constantly. I feel like it was shot directly facing her all the time, they could have at least gotten some different angles in there. The dark lighting definitely added to the melancholy feel of the film. I especially liked the flashbacks to the night where she was violated, and how we only saw snippets of it at first and then it all came together. I especially liked this one scene where a super bubbly girl sits next to her and won’t shut up and she’s wearing these sparkly pink shoes. Stewart is silent and then finally says, “nice shoes” and there’s a camera shot of Stewart’s black converse and these ridiculously sparkly pink sandals.

3)   I liked it. I guess you have to be in the right mood to watch it since it’s really sad and intense. It was definitely moving, I was choking back tears at the end.