Ahead of “Cusp’s” world premiere at Sundance, directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt told us that they hope audiences will “think about what it actually looks like to normalize trauma from such a young age and realize how much teenage girls are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.” Mission accomplished. The vérité-style doc paints a painfully bleak picture of contemporary adolescence.
Recent years have, at long last, seen discourse surrounding consent becoming more mainstream, with #MeToo helping bring awareness to just how common sexual assault is. “Cusp” is a brutal, heart-wrenching reminder of just how far we have left to go. If you had any doubt about how incredibly fucked up the climate surrounding sexual violence remains, or any misguided hopes about younger generations being spared the toxicity of yesteryear, seeing a teenage boy react to hearing about a mutual friend’s rape by saying that “it’s not rape if they’re both intoxicated” will serve as a brutal wakeup call, and it’s just one of many in “Cusp.”
A portrait of of three teenage girls living in rural Texas, the award-winning doc follows Brittney, Aaloni, and Autumn during a transitional period of their lives, where there’s no blueprint for “normal.” “My life is still, like, I don’t know what’s going on,” we’re told. Not children but not yet adults, the trio have been living with the ever-present threat of sexual abuse for years. Two of the three girls reveal that they were molested as children by a family friend. And that was just the beginning. The girls and their friends share horror story after horror story. Besides detailing what the girls have personally experienced, “Cusp” also explores the landscape they are growing up in. “I just about never get drunk when I’m going out to a party because I’m scared something’s going to happen — like someone’s going to do something,” one of the teens explains. And while you can “always tell somebody no,” they aren’t necessarily going to listen, a group of friends agrees. Autumn emphasizes that girls are also “scared to say no” because “guys are powerful.”
For the most part, Brittney, Aaloni, and Autumn don’t minimize the seriousness of rape, but it’s abundantly clear that they’ve grown accustomed to it being a part of their everyday reality. Little seems to surprise them. They don’t fear strangers in the dark — they’ve already seen, heard, and experienced enough to know that friends and boyfriends pose a greater risk to them.
We never really sense Hill and Bethencourt’s presence in the film, and that’s a feat. It feels as though Brittney, Aaloni, and Autumn are living their lives organically as opposed to performing for the camera, and the result is an intimate, empathetic look inside the lives of these three teenage girls on the cusp of adulthood — who are unfortunately coming of age in a world that remains poisoned by toxic masculinity.
“Cusp” is now in theaters in NY and LA and will premiere on Showtime November 26.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNjk85n_9g4
