Cinequest Review - Abortion Desert

Believably portraying adolescence in fiction is both difficult to pull off and punishing to get wrong. 

After all, we will go along with whatever technobabble the latest action/sci-fi romp will throw at us, largely because people mostly aren't scientists.

But, everyone has been a teenager so everyone knows when the teenagers on screen don't act quite their age.

"Abortion Desert", one of the films in the "Shorts No. 8" anthology, is one of the rare films that has 100 percent believable teenagers.

The film takes place mostly in a diner bathroom as Hayden (Abigaille Ozrey) finds out that she might be unexpectedly pregnant while her best friend Lizzy (Sherry Rene) comforts her and helps her deal with the possibility that her life has been irrevocably altered.

Hayden and Lizzy feel like real people, the kind that you might have gone to high school with and just never talked to.

They have that teenage spirit of thinking they know everything except what to do with what they know.

Though the subject matter is heavy, humor still makes it into the film. 

It never feels tawdry however, and in fact makes the film feel more real in addition to alleviating some of the tension.

While the cinematography is good, often using the claustrophobic space to its full advantage by using it to portray the dread the characters feel, what really makes this film worth watching  is the acting.

Ozrey and Rene have a rapport that is charming and never feels tawdry and with them, we get to know what it's like to be a teenage girl.

If only for a few minutes.

Other films in the anthology similarly explore girlhood, such as "Followers" and "Slap," but in more abstract ways.