Teenage pregnancy: Just not reinreden – SPIEGEL ONLINE

With the first thing we see Layla, is how she cleans the filthy sink while her boyfriend Danny stoned with his friends sits on the sofa. Danny has dropped out of school, one of the buddy is trying to sell his father’s gun to another. Layla’s escape but is already planned: She is straight-A student in the last high school year and has a university scholarship in his pocket. But shortly after, Layla achieved the commitment of the University of Austin, Texas, a further message. She is pregnant.

In a reasonable world decorated unwanted teenage pregnancy would be unfortunate, but not necessarily a disaster. A study with children would be to organize thinking about an abortion would not affront decency and morality. But in “Petting Zoo” are the conditions not so: Layla is urged by her parents brutally to get the child, and says from her scholarship; which may mean no delay, but the premature end of the trial in this case, to escape a white trash existence as a single mother.

This setting would fall into the hands of many other directors to a cinematic underlayers Gruselkabinett. The debut of Micah Magee circumnavigated this case, however, in the films of the Dardenne brothers used with absolute certainty. The strong close, producing her film to his protagonist is not simply the start that it needs to bring down the viewer together with the heroine into despair. In the images of “Petting Zoo” shimmers friendly light.

We support a man who has fallen into a predicament, to find a solution in the attempt itself. Not more. And we see that as adults age as in the crisis are no help, but mostly remarkable for Empathielosigkeit or Bräsigkeit. Layla’s parents quickly disappear from the story, Danny’s family asks Layla that she waives any right to maintenance, her new boyfriend unerringly finds the wrong words at the wrong moment. Only her grandmother and best friend provide support, at least initially. If something distraught to “Petting Zoo”, it is the fact, as a matter of course a man is left to himself.

unvarnished view of their own home

The key to his creeping, but emphatic action is to avoid any boisterous drama. “Petting Zoo” comes from without shattering shock moments. There is no emotional outbursts and no shouting (only the moment in which Layla’s father mutated as a button to howler monkeys, remains strangely unconnected to the rest of the action). This calmness is a great cinematic effect.

The newcomer Devon Keller plays Layla with a difficult to describe, resting in itself presence. A silent and at the same time strongly appearing young woman, inside seems to be already raptured the environment that surrounds them. It is at the center of the photo, there is hardly one in which it is not visible or is not filtered by their perception. Nevertheless, the figure remains elusive, Layla shows outwardly unmoved, and the film can be in the dark about what is going on in her. This blur gives the event an unusual openness.

In other respects leaves “Petting Zoo” to little doubt. The partially financed through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter film makes it clear that it does not go to him to a single fate, but a social misery. He is also a portrait of San Antonio, home of Micah Magee. The Texan city had 2013 despite nationwide declining numbers in some districts recorded four times as many underage pregnant as the national average in the US.

The unvarnished picture offered by the director of her hometown, is not very quaint: “The film is made in the places of my childhood, where my cousins ​​live today: schools that have been built by prison architect, trailer parks, rock bars, abandoned, never completely built satellite towns and commercial areas, “says Magee, who still lived until recently in Berlin. She studied at the German Film and Television Academy. “Petting Zoo” was her graduation film, he celebrated in 2015 at the Berlin world premiere.

Despite its floating narrative is “Petting Zoo” politically. The radical, but completely natural-looking focus on the protagonist can not only every moralizing comment about abortion seem presumptuous of a sudden. They also has a clarifying: “Petting Zoo” denies calmly the idea that there is an instance that would have on the question of whether a woman wants to have a child, in interfering. . In this sense, a subcutaneous feminist attitude

is manifested in this small but impressive Film Video: The trailer for “Petting Zoo”

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