Director: Meredith Alloway
Stars: Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Alexandra Shipp
There are few socially accepted secret covens like the all-girl pyjama party sleepover, an arena which Meredith Alloway makes a concerted effort to invade and conquer with her knowing horror-comedy Forbidden Fruits, a tale of witches in the mall who’ll happily reference Regina George as they ape the vapid, destructive codes of the Plastics. Alloway’s assertion that her offering is worthy of place in the pantheon of pastel shaded mean girl movies beside Heathers, The Craft, Jawbreaker or the sapphic sexual horrors of Jennifer’s Body etc is bold. Reputations are usually earned not demanded. Time will tell as to whether her invasion-by-force makes the grade, though it’s telling that Jennifer’s Body scribe Diablo Cody is on board as exec producer, providing Alloway with the stamp of credibility out of the gate.
Taking place almost exclusively within the confines of a Texan mall, we’re introduced to the unlikely trio of Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp), the slim fashionistas deigned hip enough to work at esteemed retail outlet Free Eden. By contrast, Pumpkin (Lola Tung) exists lower down the pecking order, peddling snacks out of Sister Salt’s. But, by virtue of her name, gumption and being defined by her “hotness and personality”, Pumpkin strong-arms her way into the running for a job with the Fruits, discovering as she does so a strained internal hierarchy and a plethora of witchy goings on after dark that includes regular confessionals to their collective goddess Marilyn Monroe.
Pumpkin initially seems like a guileless new addition, naive and eager to ingratiate herself, but it quickly comes to feel as though she has ulterior motives as she starts picking apart the relationships between the trio who’s trust she’s so keen on exploiting. Chiefly she intuits that recovering addict Cherry is particularly held under the thumb of Apple, victim of put downs and barbed peer pressure. A knot of unresolved personal issues tied to her sense of self-worth (or lack thereof), Cherry’s downward spiral belays a more serious set of societal ills in the American heartland to do with how young women are perceived and objectified – by others and themselves.
Alloway sets out her stall in a crude opening scene in which Apple goads a parking lot sleaze into jerking off in his car only to scold his crotch with a flaskful of hot latte. The Fruits rail against the patriarchy but also covet a kind of aggressive, maximalist slut-chic matched by Alloway’s often leering lens. There’s a lot to be said for women celebrating women – which Forbidden Fruits does readily, even tilting teasingly toward the sapphic (“we’re all Fruits here at Free Eden…”) – but there’s a chaotic energy to the posturing here. Sometimes it feels just as vacuous as the mall girl stereotypes that are both enjoyed and lambasted.
What Alloway has in her favour is a knack for a good zinger or comedic punchline, particularly as things belatedly turn bloody. Forbidden Fruits earns its horror stripes come the end. Reinhardt exudes a cheery, uneasy menace, particularly during a fountain confessional quite different to the soliloquies offered up to Marilyn. This sequence particularly bristles with unpredictability and by extension suspense. That it’s a water-based showdown also loops us back, inexorably, to Jennifer’s Body.
Forbidden Fruits deeply laments the ways that women often can’t support one another. “Girls supporting girls…” Pumpkin muses in her inaugural confession, “I wish it was real”. As the movie unfurls these young women are repeatedly pitted against one another in ever-varying combinations, usually out of reactionary desperation as they try to determine which of them is ‘the snake’ in their midst, or while trying to appease the whims of Apple. And while Cherry is criticised for her ‘main character syndrome’, Pedretti’s performance is the film’s most interesting. The character is eminently pitiable, frustrating and tragic, and Pedretti steals the show.
It’s tricky to parse, at this stage, whether the film’s efforts to appear kooky and offbeat (collectively drinking from a bejewelled boot; getting placebo highs from ingesting sequins; adopting the Showgirls pronunciation of ‘Versace’ in an act of solidarity and recognition) will afford it a place in the lexicon of ‘Mean Girl’ movies on their own. Alloway approaches the gaudy, the tacky and the girlish with the same fervent gusto that Anna Biller covets the dressage and paraphernalia of mid-’60s exploitation cinema. Her iteration of Barbie – the pointedly anonymous ‘Jane Doe’ – is perceived by the girls as “the ultimate girlboss”. A reflection of the re-codification of Mattel’s product in the wake of Greta Gerwig’s movie, or a homage of genuine affection? With these levels of compounded irony, it’s hard to tell what’s serious and what isn’t.
Still, serious or not, you don’t besmirch Buffy and get a high score around here, no matter what you’re doing right.
The Lost Highway Hotel 