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Last Updated: Oct 22nd, 2008 - 03:14:34 |
Frontrunners is director Caroline Suh’s cinema vérité project covering an elite New York City high school’s month long student union election for a president and vice president.
If the competition of overprivileged junior-achievers for a title to enhance their college applications sounds trifling, then give Frontrunners a pass.
There are no emotional meltdowns for the camera in Frontrunners. The beautiful and calculating Manhattanite teens who audiences might recognize from Gossip Girl and Cruel Intentions do not make cameos.
The movie’s greatest asset is that the teens seem ordinary, if unusually intelligent, and the camera warms to each one.
Suh doesn’t play the reality-drama game, though one young candidate is an actress, and Frontrunners is not without its own sincere brand of pathos.
Character is formed through the challenges of high school, and Stuyvesant High School has a reputation built on challenges as one of the most competitive schools in the country, boasting more of its graduates in the top universities and four Nobel laureates.
Suh told a South By Southwest Film Festival interviewer that she was attracted to an election that was taken seriously.
And Stuyvesant students are interested in politics, with insights on and opinions of the process.
With the school’s primaries, debates, coverage by the student paper and diverse racial demographic, a real-life dramatic narrative was already in place.
Bright, well-spoken and motivated, Suh found that Stuyvesant High School came with its own dynamic characters.
The message behind the movie’s teen “politics,” in every sense of the word, is that it has its parallels in the challenges of the adult world.
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Frontrunners will air at the Starz Film Center Oct. 24 -30. Check www.starzfilmcenter.com for showtimes.
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The value of image plays a large part whenever people are vying for any kind of prestige, more so than positions on issues. A winning candidate, in and out of high school, has to be good-looking and likable.
Take for instance the “cool” candidate, Mike, who assumes that since his social clout won him the title of sophomore class president, student union leadership will follow.
Hannah, who some viewers might recognize from the indie drama Palindromes is the chipper redhead who is head of the cheerleading squad and drama program.
There is the serious, lovably self-aggrandizing freshman class president, George, whose running mate seems to be in a perpetual state of embarrassment.
Personality is the only dependable quality in candidates, says the coordinator of student affairs, so high school is a lot like a presidential campaign.
The young candidates find they’re affected by voter apathy. Fair reporting is a hurdle for the student newspaper staff, who understand they wield the power to endorse a candidate.
Race and gender are major deciding factors in choosing a candidate and are always a concern in the Stuyvesant elections. Many students comment on the ticket that’s “too white” or “too female” because the school’s diverse population seeks out a racially diverse, gender-balanced ticket.
The greater implication of identity politics and voting in the U.S. presidential elections does not go unnoticed.
Sometimes you don’t have time to pay attention to the election, so you base your vote on whom you can relate to by what you see in their picture, says one Stuyvesant student.
Frontrunners will likely take its place as a microcosm of timely political concerns, as seen through the candid and frequently startlingly on-point observations of a group of bright young people.
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