Flipped (2010) ʚ♡ɞ

Flipped (2010).

    The movie that has the honor of being the first one to be talked about on this blog will be Flipped, directed by Rob Reiner. One of Reiner's more underrated works and one of my favorites. 

    Flipped tells the story of Bryce Loski and Juli Baker, two kids who have been living across from each other nearly their entire lives. The movie is told in 2 parts - Juli's perspective and Bryce's - and even though the film goes between the two multiple times, there is a chance we never get a 100 percent accurate account throughout the whole film, even if events being told match up because of internal biases. 

    The first part is Bryce's perspective of meeting Juli and leading to the climax of the film, and since they met, Juli has had a crush on Bryce and skirts around in hopes he is her first kiss. According to Bryce, he has been trying to get rid of Juli's presence around him since he moved into town, and he doesn't consider her a friend. But when we switch to Juli's perspective, she sees herself being nice to Bryce as a way to get him to open up to her, which he seemingly eventually does, even if he still finds her annoying. Throughout the film, Juli and Bryce grow and grow apart, then eventually come back together as more actualized people.... or as actualized as you can be at 12 years old. 

    It's so interesting how a change in perspective can alter everything. Bryce thinks throughout most of the film that he hates Juli, but it's obvious to the viewer, and someone who has watched this film hundreds of times, that Bryce has always liked Juli. He feigns that he ignores her existence, but in all honesty, he is equally as obsessed and fascinated with her as she is with him throughout the film.

    It's a gorgeous story of she falls first, and he falls harder, but it is also more than that. In getting rid of his own biases, Bryce grows to understand Juli and understand that he doesn't want to become what he is growing into - a miserable, hateful man like his father. And Juli learns through her relationship with Bryce to stop taking people at face value and actually look into the people around her. At the time, Bryce wasn't worthy of Juli's good graces; he wasn't a good friend or person to her. But as they both grow, they grow to like each other for who the person is and who they will grow into, even if they would have gotten to that eventually; the love reformed into something less muddy and purer.

    Aside from the plot, I also love the aesthetics of this movie.

Boys will look at you like this and swear they don't want anything. Damn shame.

Mind you, this is when he "hated" her.

    I'm a sucker for modern movies set in the 40s-50s; I don't know why. The costumes, the lighting, the lack of phones, ugh. It feels like a cute peek into the life of people who lived through that time.

    However, it is not lost on me that there is not a single person of color in this film outside of one of the firefighters who does the worst thing in the movie. There can be an argument for the film being "historically accurate" because really and truly, the 1950s were not a fun time to be anything but a white man in America (still isn't, but I digress)  and Jim Crow and segregation was a mandated thing but this was filmed in 2010 and the book its based off of is set in the 90s, I feel like I wouldn't have minded seeing a splash of color anywhere in this film even just in the background. When you put that aside, which you quite literally have to, the film is honestly a cute, comforting movie about first love and individual growth. 

I'd recommend you all watch it!

☆ stay cool, cool girls! ☆

xoxo,

eternalcoolgirl ☆