“Share”– Movie Review

This weekend, I attended the closing night of the New Directors/New Films festival, with the New York Premiere of the drama “Share”, written and directed by Pippa Bianco. 

Synopsis

When a high school student is victimized by a viral video, can she and her family recover from this experience?

Story

Early one morning, Mandy (Rhianne Barreto), a teenager, awakens, but she is not in bed; instead, she finds herself face-down on her parents’ front lawn.  How she got there is unclear, but she somehow manages to make her way inside, where she gets a much-needed good night’s sleep.  Eventually, she returns to school, where she attends classes and resumes playing on her high school basketball team.  Life, it seems, is back to normal – but this doesn’t last.  Before too long, Mandy’s friends contact her, informing her that there is a compromising video of her on the internet. 

From there, things begin to unravel for everyone.  Soon, the police are contacted, the school’s administration becomes involved and the salacious story is portrayed by the nightly news on television.  But the question remains:  who is the victim and who is the perpetrator in this instance?  None of the answers are crystal clear – including for Mandy herself.  She was at a party with her fellow students, then had an extended make-out session with one of them. After a night of binge drinking, she passed out and was then taken advantage of by that young man.

Soon, the community turns against not only Mandy, but also, her entire family.  When one of the boys in the video is suspended from school, his father engages in a physical confrontation with Mandy’s father.  Even Mandy finds herself under suspicion of the school when it is believed that she may not have been the victim she was originally portrayed to be.  Under suspension from her basketball team because of her drinking episode, Mandy finds her friends and teammates turning away from her.  With the entire family under the microscope, will Mandy be able to maintain her standing at the school when she discovers that she may have been a willing participant in this escapade?     

Review

In “Share”, there is an enormous degree of courage, nuance and complexity.  A great deal of this story’s complexity derives from the impact of technology – that is, the social impact which technology has had on all of us, regardless of our own individual demographic.  What that means is, culturally, we cannot see a clear right and wrong when viewing a movie such as this because rights and wrongs abound all throughout.  Clearly, the finger of blame may be pointed at more than one person and those targets are not necessarily ones who are the most obviously villainous. 

Pippa Bianco has created a film which will likely start a long, uncomfortable conversation for people regardless of political philosophy, gender and age.  Bianco tells her story by gradually peeling away layers of an onion; doing so makes for an interesting narrative choice but results in the audience being challenged.  We know whose story this is but have we been rooting for or against the wrong people?  The more we learn of the details behind the story, the more our view of certain characters changes.  As a result, the people whom we assumed were the protagonists and antagonists in the beginning may change as the motion picture progresses. 

Following the screening, there was an interview with writer/director Pippa Bianco, who said that this film started back in 2015 as a short with the same title; that version was basically the first portion of this movie and the feature (longer form) was the aftermath.  She shot the short with the hope and intention that eventually she would be able to turn in into a longer form eventually.  Towards that end, she did extensive research into cases such as this, which included not only victims, but also alleged perpetrators, school administrators, digital surveillance experts and many others.