Weightless

Bluesky

The high colours and bright sunlight of the warm Danish school holiday period offer the airy feel that is suggested by the title, but the teenagers at the leafy, waterside summer camp where the action in Weightless unfolds have more earthly concerns. Many, like 15-year-old Lea (Marie Helweg Augustsen), are there for what they hope will be a change for the better. She wants to lose weight with the help of a regime that regulates meals and rewards exercise, while aiming to boost teenagers’ self-confidence. “I just want to feel better about myself,” she says.

Not everyone there has what might be considered a “weight problem”, with Lea’s roommate Sasha (Ella Paaske) a case in point. She’s what people used to term “a handful” – blonde, brassy and more sexually experienced than the much shyer and gentler Lea. Sasha’s impulsiveness might be an issue for adults but to Lea it has a magnetic quality, offering a pull towards something more daring, even though Marianne Lentz’s sharply observed screenplay makes us aware that Lea is, at heart, a sensible kid. The girls’ relationship is an important element of a film, as we see how their competing desires become a point of friction even as their shared experience of societal expectations for teenage girls also offer a point of solidarity. Their encounters with local boys shine a light on both issues and act as a reminder that though Sasha may appear more streetwise on the surface, she is also just a teenage girl trying to get to grips with how she feels about herself and life.

Lea is also experiencing all the usual turbulence of teenage hormones, so it’s little wonder that she also finds herself drawn to easygoing adult camp instructor Rune (Joachim Fjelstrup), thrilling to his positive feedback even before she catches a sneaky glimpse of him taking a shower – a moment of ambiguity regarding what is intentional and unintentional that blossoms into dangerous fruit as the drama unfolds.

Debut director Emilie Thalund keeps us with Lea, often letting her face fill the frame or lingering on her as we watch her process what she wants or what is happening to her. We feel the heat that proximity brings to her but also come to appreciate and care for this sensitive young soul. Beyond the teenager there’s attention to the ephemera of life at the camp as cinematographer Louise McLaughlin’s camera roams about, so we can see the idle details of teenagehood in the girls’ room and beyond.

Other films, including the likes of Fat Girl, have dealt with body image and desire before, but there’s also the trickling sense of danger around power imbalance and the sharp contrast between an adult and child perspective that recalls Palm Trees And Power Lines (coincidentally also featuring a teen lead named Lea). The film, which took home the New Directors prize in San Sebastian, never makes light of Lea’s desires while at the same time showing us in real time how reality competes with imagination, fear with excitement, these conflicting emotions playing out in Helweg Augustsen impressively sensitive debut performance. It also keeps the faith with its character as she processes events on her own terms. In avoiding melodramatics, Lentz and Thalund emphasise the worryingly commonplace feel of what occurs and show how easy boundaries can be crossed when teenagers are still in the process of figuring out where those lie.

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