This is a well-meaning film that sincerely cares about complex issues plaguing American life. This includes homophobia, misogyny, cancer, peer pressure, eating disorders, and predatory behaviour from young men. The film also represents disabled and queer women at a time when such identities are being pushed further to the margins of on-screen representation. Catherine Argyrople’s directorial debut deserves its praise as an indie film trying to put good back into a hurting world.

Lifelong friends Nat (Deanna Tarraza) and Zoe Christopoulos (Molly Morneweck) undergo a challenging period in their friendship in the final summer before starting high school. Nat’s abuela (MaGa Uzo) is dying, and her first kiss is with another woman, Lexie (Maia Isabel Frias), bringing out her father’s classical “not-in-my-house” homophobic slur. Zoe has her own struggles to worry about too. The new pressures of high school and making new friends shake her body insecurities, causing her to join the row team (amongst other, more harmful practices) to lose weight. Zoe also finds herself forced into giving a lamentable handjob by the local prick.

A lot is going wrong in the girls’ lives and much of it is because of how others treat them. One interesting element of the script is that, with one exception, the people who do awful things to them the dad’s homophobia, a friend who slips alcohol into a drink – are not fully demonised. The things they do are still treated with disagreement and even contempt, but the people themselves and the relationships they reflect are not impossible to redeem. Argyrople’s script doesn’t redeem them either, though. And perhaps that’s not what’s important to her. These are just elements of the growing pains the girls endure.

Unfortunately, its intentions do not overpower the inadequate artistry.

The young actors are mostly non-professionals and first-time feature talents and their lack of experience makes for awkward deliveries given in theatrical cadences and overcompensating facial expressions. The blocking and cinematography don’t help them out either. Establishing shots are a rarity, and a larger visual context is almost completely absent in every shot. Instead of instructing the viewer on how to feel, the cinematography merely holds the information of the film as if it were trying to translate a stage play to television with little change.

Often, the actors will move just for the sake of moving, or the camera will change its primary focus mid-dialogue and leave an awkward amount of talking space (or, in a weird direction) on one side of the frame. The first scene of the two girls on their bed talking about the next school year is typical of the incompetent filmmaking. Every line of cheesy dialogue suggests a different degree of closeness between the two girls and every other shot is a full shot of one of the two girls with the other completely outside of frame, leaving no space for live reaction.

In other words: the filmmaking ruins a lot of the good grace the well-intended themes earned.

Growing Pains premiered in the Boston International Film Festival in 2024