A confession: having been born and raised in Derry, I don’t really understand the Irish education system. I did GCSEs and A-levels and, despite what my CV says, didn’t really learn much Irish in the three-year period in which I learned it. The UK system taught me how to number Princess Margaret’s crowns in order of size, and blame the Famine on picky eating, but also means I have never understood what a transition year is, or how the various classes conform to year groups I understand. What, in the name of Ann and Barry, is a senior infant, for example, and how does one become one?
There is only one other education system I feel I know as well as my own, and that is, of course, the American high school. Like every other person in Christendom, I was fed a diet of high-school fare every bit as standardised as a particularly tricky multiple-choice English test: dropouts, dances, doomed romances, freaks, geeks and popular cliques. We have all heard a thousand bells knell classes to a close, and seen precocious nerds sprawl, in their hundreds, having been impacted with just the right amount of force to spray their books across the corridor.
Many staples of the format are so embedded in the culture that they exist even in the minds of those who have never experienced anything like them in real life. What is the pep in a pep rally? What is a homecoming king or queen and whence do they return?
Hers is the Cyrano de Bergerac part; the lovelorn wit hoping to woo the object of her affection with words
So it is that, just when you thought the high-school rom-com genre was bursting like a pair of freshly wedgied jeans, Netflix put out two new modern takes which, on the surface, have a lot in common.
Text relationship
In Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, we meet the titular homely teen, a girl who gets into a text relationship with a boy (Noah Centineo) who thinks he's communicating with the prettiest girl in her school. Sporting a more offbeat, washed-out tone than that plot summary might suggest, Sierra is buoyed by strong performances from its three leads, and a knack for knotty, naturalistic dialogue. Shannon Purser stole hearts and dominated the meme-scape with her amiable if insubstantial part as Barb in Stranger Things, and this breakout starring role shows she has the chops to handle a film by herself. Hers is the Cyrano de Bergerac part; the lovelorn wit hoping to woo the object of her affection with words, where she feels her looks might fail. To do this, she even enlists the help of her cheerleader antagonist Veronica (Kristine Froseth) to play along in the deceit, and these scenes form the strongest part of the film, as we witness a budding friendship between the two girls which is very impressively realised, and infinitely more interesting than the central romantic plot.
While those scenes have an amiable frankness to them, some other areas of the script wander into broader strokes, such as when we meet Veronica’s mother, a pantomime grotesque who literally chastises her daughter for studying. “That’s gonna get you far with the boys,” she says, with an energy that might have been charming in a Roald Dahl book, but here seems squarely out of place. There’s also the slightly queasy nature of the film’s central conceit: namely, that identity theft is a very cool fun time. At one point, her gay best friend™ even tries to rally her spirits with the immortal jibe: “Are you a catfish or a can’t fish?” The slightly creepy overtones of this plot are never really resolved within the film, and for it to end without ever doing so leaves a slightly sour taste.
Love letters
To All the Boys I've Loved Before, on the other hand, smacks that bubble gum flavour right back into the viewer's mouth. In it, an inexperienced girl reaps a whirlwind when private love letters she's written to her various crushes are inadvertently posted to their subjects. All of which causes her to contrive a fake relationship with the most popular boy in school (again played by Noah Centineo) so as to throw her real crush off the scent. So far, so formulaic. But, just like a teen who compiles a mixtape featuring music that would seem more appropriate to the tastes of a fortysomething screenwriter, the devil is in the details.
Again, here, most of the praise belongs to the cast, especially young star Lana Condor, who delivers a masterclass in likability as protagonist Lara Jean – by turns adorable, oblivious, funny and deeply, deeply insecure. Condor imbues Lara Jean with an emotional vulnerability that seems more deep and rounded than Purser’s slightly more mannered Burgess, who sometimes has the bearing of one smiling at events off-screen.
None of its many tropes outstays its welcome, and you'd need a heart of furry, black mould not to beam throughout
Also, in common with Sierra, Condor is ably supported by Centineo, who effectively plays a better-drawn and more interesting version of the character he plays in the former film, albeit with the exact same Mark-Ruffalo-as-a-baby starriness. As a result, he and Condor evince an easy charisma that never ceases to be a joy to watch.
Hellish griefscape
And joy is the operative word. While Sierra Burgess makes high school seem like one person against a hellish griefscape of status and class – Sparta with backpacks and band practice – To All the Boys I've Loved Before really gets across the glee of young love and teen drama, and shares its zingers around an able cast. The greatest compliment you can give To All the Boys I've Loved Before is that none of its many tropes outstays its welcome, and you'd need a heart of furry, black mould not to beam throughout.
In the end, both films conclude with the lesson that you should probably, eventually, be honest with Noah Centineo if you’ve written him any lovelorn messages. And, honestly, what better lesson could one take from their schooldays? Perhaps that you should always put Irish down as a second language even if you can barely speak it; but then, that’s just common sense.
