{"id":350158,"date":"2026-03-21T02:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350158\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T02:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:50:11","slug":"elsie-fisher-in-revelatory-queer-teen-indie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350158\/","title":{"rendered":"Elsie Fisher in Revelatory Queer Teen Indie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the hot, dry climate of Northwest Nevada, a mother drops off her daughter in town, urging her not to come home anytime soon. Cleo (Elsie Fisher<\/a>) looks away as her mom gives her an unearned dressing-down, cruelly reminding her that she is not above her surroundings. She waits until her mother has already driven away before she responds with futile adolescent anger. <\/p>\n

\n\tCleo is effectively on her own for the rest of the film, with her mother never once appearing. Even when Cleo goes missing later in the film, the audience is never formally introduced to her mother. Instead, first-time director Fergus Campbell drops us directly into Cleo\u2019s world \u2014 no parents, no rules and every authority figure is obscured, like the unintelligible adults in Peanuts cartoons. From the film\u2019s hand-painted opening title sequence to the occasional intrusion of illustrations throughout the story, Sparks is the kind of microbudget indie that film festivals were made to showcase. Every frame is crafted with care and love for the cinematic form.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSparks\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tWhat indie film festivals were made for.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Spotlight)
Cast: Elsie Fisher, Charlie Foster, Madison Hu, Denny Mcauliffe, Thomas Deen Baker, Julia D\u2019Angelo, Marshall John Simon, Race Cooper, Simon Downes Toney
Director\/Writer: Fergus Campbell
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 16 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen a book on Jean-Luc Godard pops out of a cigarette machine, Cleo knows where she wants to go. She immediately disappears into the fantasy of 1960s Paris, a place she sees as the birth of a truer form of cinema, outside of American conventions. Luckily for her, she\u2019s soon introduced to \u201cThe Crop,\u201d a group of rebellious teenagers who believe the local reservoir is a time portal. The group\u2019s de facto leader, Antoine (Charlie Foster), is just as enamored of Paris in the 1960s, despite knowing nothing of the French New Wave. Once he meets Cleo, he\u2019s instantly obsessed with her, driving a wedge between him and his best friend and secret lover, Max (Denny Mcauliffe). <\/p>\n

\n\tThe rest of the group is much more chill, fascinated by the idea of time travel but content where they are. The original \u201cCrop\u201d includes the emotional Antoine, brutally honest Max, goofy Trip (Simon Downes Toney), laid back Kane (Thomas Deen Baker) and soft-spoken Casazza (Julia D\u2019Angelo). Then there\u2019s Odette (Madison Hu), who is secretly in love with Cleo, but mostly keeps it to herself. It\u2019s Odette who introduces Cleo to \u201cThe Crop\u201d and sets the story into motion.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith its queer love triangle and multiple scenes of \u201cCrop\u201d boys hooking up with each other, Sparks feels like a modern successor to the early films of Gregg Araki. Nowhere and Totally F***ed Up easily come to mind as we watch the kids party in the empty parking lot they call home, supplied with beer acquired with fake IDs. Similar to more recent indies like Kate Beecroft\u2019s East of Wall<\/a> and Luke Gilford\u2019s National Anthem<\/a>, Sparks blends classical rural imagery with a more ethnically and socially diverse worldview. Watching these films has been exciting, as they breathe new life into American independent cinema. <\/p>\n

\n\tCampbell\u2019s script has both stylized and naturalistic dialogue, giving us a group of teens who feel painfully real in their inconsistency. When Cleo goes missing, it\u2019s unclear whether she actually time-traveled or is simply having a mental health crisis. It could go either way.<\/p>\n

\n\tFoster gives a star-making performance as Antoine, an idealistic faux beatnik who can\u2019t seem to accept that the object of his affection is just as clueless as he is. Fisher, who broke out in Bo Burnham\u2019s directorial debut Eighth Grade<\/a>, is the heart of Sparks, once again playing a girl who is struggling more than she lets on. Like many young women, she puts on a brave face, hoping her confidence will take her wherever she needs to go. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt a slim 76 minutes, Sparks pulls you in tight and never lets go, every frame bursting with teen angst and longing. It\u2019s the kind of film that inspires young people to tell small, meaningful stories outside of the Hollywood machine. This critic hopes Sparks is seen by every teenager who needs it. Fergus Campbell has made something very special; I can\u2019t wait to see what he does next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the hot, dry climate of Northwest Nevada, a mother drops off her daughter in town, urging her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[137421,146,85,46,397,52223,39175,170427,165097],"class_list":["post-350158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-elsie-fisher","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-south-by-southwest","tag-sxsw","tag-sxsw-2025","tag-sxsw-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}