Foot Trouble
2024 · 10m · USA
Directed by Vanessa Meyer
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
It's 1999, and a 16-year-old narrates her own adolescence into a camcorder — gym class, a crush who won't quite land, her mother's new boyfriend hovering at the kitchen table. The video-diary frame turns standard coming-of-age beats darkly funny.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Coming-of-age usually means strings and slow zooms. Setting it in 1999 with a camcorder confessional is at least an interesting cage to put the cliches in.
An Eighth Grade refusing to reassure, filtered through 1999 Hi8 confessional — Meyer trusts the camcorder frame to do the period work without overdecorating. Sharply seen.
A 1999 camcorder confessional anchoring a 16-year-old's coming-of-age — the period frame and the diary form are doing a lot of work, and Meyer trusts both to make standard beats darkly funny. The format choice is the personality.