Tina Kakadelis
To be a weirdo or a loser in high school doesn’t feel so bad when you’re surrounded by people who profoundly get you. As silly as the colloquial phrase “find someone who matches your freak” sounds, there’s immense truth to it. Especially when it comes to the high school years, when it’s so easy to feel like an outcast. If there’s one other person who gets you, that’s all you really need. In Megan Rico and Kade Atwood’s SXSW-premiering Edie Arnold Is a Loser, they’ve created a Catholic, punk rock love letter to the fellow weirdos who make life less lonely.
As the title quite heavily implies, Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) isn’t what you would call a popular kid. She’s moody, goofy, and uninhibited in a way that goes against pretty much all that all-girls Catholic schools stand for. Her best friend is Frances (McKenna Tuckett), a fellow loner, but the two don’t ever seem like they want to be somewhere else. They love the odd little friendship they have and goof off at every chance they get. They’re accompanists for the choir, and it’s there that they hatch a plan to start a punk band. Edie on drums, Frances on vocals and keys. Nothing more punk rock than screamo versions of hymns, right?
In plenty of teen movies, the central conflict comes from a rift that begins between two loner friends when one starts getting a taste of popularity. Think Lady Bird. While that’s a common reality for friendships in high school, it’s also nice that at no point in Edie Arnold Is a Loser do the two best buds turn on each other. Even when Edie gets a date with the hottie altar boy (Lucas Van Orden), Frances is cheering her on. When Edie misses a gig, sure, she’s hurt, but quickly comes around given the circumstances. It’s refreshing that it’s never their bond that comes into question. They simply get to be best friends, taking on the highs and horrors of high school together.
Edie Arnold Is a Loser has a distinct homemade nature to it, as though it lives in the doodles of a bored student’s notes. Dreamy, idealistic, funny, and earnest, Rico’s script captures adolescence in its natural habitat. Little animations are added to some of the scenes and swooping sound effects match the motions of the characters to make the film as youthful as its subject. The opening credits show the filmmaking team’s names scrawled on desktops, whiteboards, and backpacks. These small touches add a richness to the students of Our Lady of Undying Sadness and the rest of the world of Edie Arnold Is a Loser.
Rico and Atwood’s film is very much for the weirdo kids. The ones who didn’t care if they were popular, but cared deeply for their friends. It’s never about the number of people someone can call a friend, but the few who loyally see through all the fronts and the walls into the soul. In high school, that’s the only currency that matters. Edie Arnold Is a Loser is a coming-of-age film, but not one that chronicles a massive emotional change. Edie is already really happy with who she is. She’s just figuring out what she wants in the world and how that impacts the relationship she has with her mother (Cherish Rodriguez), who doesn’t see Edie the way Edie sees herself. What a trip that is. When the person who’s known you the longest cannot understand you, how is that relationship reconciled?
“Church is just like the Lord’s gig.” If Edie Arnold Is a Loser proves anything, it’s that Edie Arnold may very well be a loser, but she loves it. Punk rock has no age restriction. It’s a place and a genre of music for the losers and the loners who love that about themselves. Punk rock is freedom from worrying about conforming to a specific image or way of being. It’s a loud, riotous celebration of being true to yourself, whatever that looks like. Edie Arnold might be a loser, but Edie Arnold Is a Loser is a real winner.
