Lyne: Foxes (1980)

Sometimes the best teenage films are those that come off as a little unformed, spontaneous, rough around the edges, since they’re the films you really feel are made exclusively for the teens they’re targeting – films that simply assume their demographic know all the characters already, casting a protective shell around audience and actors that imbues both with a fragility and fallibility that’s perhaps truer to teen experience than more big-budget productions or romanticised, glossy fantasies. Released on the cusp of the 80s, Adrian Lyne’s directorial debut is one of those films, revolving around a couple of weeks in the life of four teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley as they experiment with drugs, sex and other mind-expanding experiences. However, as if in a riposte to the sex comedies that were becoming so prominent at the time, the more sensational material is neither sensationalised nor demystified in the matter-of-fact manner that might make it more palatable to an adult audience. Instead, it’s more or less absorbed into the ambience of the film, which is largely driven by Jodie Foster’s role as Jeanie, the reluctant leader of the pack, but also stems from the way Lyne handles the backdrops and city. Although the girls move around a lot – at times, it’s a veritable panorama of 80s teendom – Lyne never moves much further beyond close-ups and mid-shots, which makes every scene feel a bit constrained, a bit trapped, while ensuring that the few genuinely panoramic moments feel like something of a fantasy, not least because they’re when Giorgio Moroder’s soundtrack kicks in. Even that, though, never quite settles into a disco beat – Donna Summer’s vocals are there, ghostly, in nearly every montage sequence, but never attain anything close to diva conviction – as Lyne creates a lingering boredom, a smouldering restlessness, a collective longing for some kind of escape from the sprawl that makes every cruisey outing feel like a runaway in slow-motion. Yet in L.A., as the girls know all too well, you can run forever without finding anywhere different, as we drift through a series of spaces that never quite feel outside but never quite feel inside either, poised at the threshold of an adult world that continues to recede while never really allowing the to girls even enjoy it as a threshold, since there’s always just another breathless horizon, another perfectly composited limit-space, just a block away. Even the most drastic, eccentric trajectories – including, most memorably, a skateboard-car chase – are absorbed back into the city, with barely a trace, while the film often feels like a succession of ever-escalating climaxes that are nevertheless devoid of even the slightest sense of catharsis. In other words, it’s an anguished hymn to Los Angeles, which feels even more Foster’s city than New York in Taxi Driver, especially once the action starts to centre on West Hollywood – her ability to summon up the cruisey ebb and flow between childhood and adulthood, day and night, communion and disaffection, is perfect for a character and city that “longs to feel the pain in things,” even as the film feels more and more narcotised, carbound and curfewed with every neon-clad moment.