Chaperone
Written and Directed by Zoë Eisenberg
102 minutes
Starring Mitzi Akaha, Laird Akeo, Jessica Jade Andres
Unrated
Premieres January 19 at Slamdance Film Festival

by Jo Rempel, Staff Writer

Since the mid-teens influencer explosion, pop culture has developed a newfound obsession with aging. Elaborate skincare rituals fight the march of time. Personal Shein hauls and room tours put you in the front seat to a lifestyle with money, time, and a finger on the pulse. The trick is selling someone a cliffnotes version of the past, though not the past, or anyone’s. Because “peaked in high school” is an insult for a reason.

Chaperone, the debut feature from Hawai’ian director Zoë Eisenberg, dares to ask, what if you went all in on abating the slow march of time? The film follows Misha (Mitzi Akaha), a twenty-nine-year-old box office worker who actively refuses a promotion for fear of responsibility, having no ambition other than smoking weed and playing with her cat. As the heiress of a wealthy grandmother, she has a rustic house to relax in, and a low-maintenance lifestyle. The fridge door won’t stay shut and there’s a dark spot on the back porch and her car’s pretty beat up, so who knows how long that’ll last. Meanwhile, the theatre’s on the verge of going under—not that Misha cares, even if her boss, Kenzie (Jessica Jade Andres) is also her best friend.

Misha’s home life is presented in cool tones and a melancholy guitar score. It’s hard to believe in the blissful ignorance she attests to. But at least she looks young, so young in fact that she’s mistaken for a fellow high school senior by theatre patron Jake (Laird Akeo). Then, she’s grocery shopping where he works part time and they start flirting. Then, she’s at a beach party with him and two other strangers, where she finally learns how old this guy is. Instead of deterring her, this leads Misha to neither confirm nor deny her own teendom. As the pair’s relationship progress over a period of months, she won’t exactly lie to the guy. He simply happens to have something which Misha needs: an abundance of youth.

Jake’s mother, Georgia (Krista Alvarez), only ever referred by first name, thinks highly—far too highly—of Misha. Her son finally has a good influence, just in time for his senior year. While Georgia might value honesty and vulnerability, first-name-basis and all, she says these things to her would-be daughter-in-law in a canny, confidential tone. Mothers are supposed to already know, anyways. This lopsided dialectic of knowledge when Chaperone is at its best: trying to make sense of who knows what the other doesn’t, or who’s supporting the other’s lifestyle. When in doubt, the answer is the opposite of whatever someone’s saying. The use of mise-en-scène though restrained, emphasizes the emptiness of Misha’s house, as well as her brother’s warehouse home and his ice cream shop, emphasizing the hollowness of her and Jake’s words.

If you want to know whether being the “good influence” among high schoolers would have a positive influence on one’s own life, the answer is a definitive no. The more time Misha spends with these people, the less responsibility she takes over herself, her house, her career. The film’s title is a clear reference to Misha’s status as sole adult. Personally, the lyrics to Fiona Apple’s “Daredevil” were playing through my head the whole time: “all I want's a confidante / To help me laugh it off / And don't let me ruin me / I may need a chaperone”.

Except Misha is too intractable to seek supervision at all. Even the very idea that her actions might have consequences doesn’t register; only when directly affected does she begin to flinch. The situations she puts herself in—she can host a house party, and there are no parents to come home early from their vacation!—and her frustrating attempts at maintaining a sense of normalcy—she gets to contend with Kenzie’s cop husband—will be ideal cringe comedy for some. There’s an ironic tone to Chaperone, though it leans towards the tragic end of things. For everything Misha says or does, its inalterable consequence functions as the double meaning. Now, narrative powerlessness is part and parcel with the romance and dread of any old high school movie. What’s supposed to make it interesting is that this time our protagonist is in a hell of her own choosing. I do not find this interesting, seeing our protagonist has been cast in so much doubt from the start. It’s hard to root for her lost cause when she hardly even knows what she wants.

At one point, we peek into a visit paid to Misha’s brother, Vik (Kanoa Goo) by her and Jake. Only later will Vik find out the truth of their relationship through a news story about Jake’s track prowess. We could only have seen the middle of the preceding conversation: it’s impossible to imagine a high schooler going so long without mentioning gym, or lunch, or the next quiz. At times, having rode the tension for long enough, a moment like this will come along and rather than cutting it, twist it in order to say something other than “you should have good financial sense, and don’t date high schoolers either.” Hearing Jake’s friends call Misha “Cat Turd” made me think of this as well: of a woman who bends to others so that they might share in her delusions. Too bad that “reality” and “morals” must swoop in.