It's one hot night near the end of summer somewhere in leafy suburban America, and a bunch of high school kids — from baby-faced freshmen to confident seniors — ride bikes out to their favorite swimming holes, cruise around in cars blaring tunes, wander from house to house thinking that the next party will be better and, with the help of alcohol, try to get sloppy enough to make out with someone. They're all restless, not realizing that years from now, they're going to look back at this aimless freedom as "the best days of their lives."
This bittersweet combination of nostalgia and loss has fueled any number of classic coming-of-age flicks, from "American Graffiti" to "Dazed & Confused," and director David Robert Mitchell aims for similar territory with his 2010 debut, "The Myth of the American Sleepover," which is only now getting released at the Tollywood theater in Shimokitazawa, Aug. 27-Sept. 9, presumably thanks to the success of his sophomore film, "It Follows."
"Sleepover" benefits from having been made while Mitchell's memories were still fresh; he wrote the movie right after finishing grad school and shot it on a lean $30,000 budget with a cast of unknowns. Like Richard Linklater did in "Dazed & Confused," Mitchell prioritizes capturing what it really felt like to be a teen — that sense of wanting something more but not knowing exactly what — and rejects the usual stereotypes of high school movies and TV dramas.