For all of us, our twenties are fast approaching or well-underway. Maybe you’re a LinkedIn fiend with internships and grad jobs set in stone. Or maybe you’re just going to ride the waves and see where they take you – whether it’s back to your parents’ house, to Thailand, or towards the wrong person… Luckily, there’s a film for every kind of quarter-life crisis.
Chungking Express (1994)
Wong Kar-wai paints Hong Kong in neon lights and bright, hazy colours, as we follow two loosely connected stories about police officers both jilted by ex-girlfriends. One copes by eating thirty cans of pineapple and his feelings, chewing on (pun intended) the expiration date of canned goods and love alike, before falling for a mysterious blonde-wigged woman from the city’s underbelly. The other meets a server at a snack bar he frequents, who becomes secretly infatuated with him. Interspersed with low frame rate sequences and the hypnotic repetition of “California Dreamin’”, this film leaves you feeling dazed and disoriented, mirroring the way love troubles can send you into freefall.
Frances Ha (2012)
Starry-eyed and goofy, Frances (Greta Gerwig) is an aspiring dancer in her late-twenties struggling to aord the expenses of living in New York. When her friend/flatmate moves out, she drifts from apartment to apartment, enduring the harsh realities of adulthood – dreams that never quite materialise, friends drifting and leaving you behind, financial instability. The monochrome rendering of Frances Ha is nostalgic and comforting, a trick that will fool your overstimulated mind into entering a pocket away from the hustle and bustle of contemporary life. Frances confesses, “I’m so embarrassed, I’m not even a real person yet,” reassuring us that it’s okay to not have everything figured out.
Perfect Days (2023)
Everyday, Hirayama rises at dawn to follow his routine; he works as a public toilet cleaner in Shibuya, listens to cassette tapes in his van, appreciates how sunlight filters through tree leaves, falls asleep reading – and repeat. The world that awaits you post-graduation can seem cutthroat, but Perfect Days is a meditation on small pleasures and kindnesses that shift your perspective to existing wholly in the present. Hirayama is content with living slowly, a single game of tic-tac-toe is played over days, as the rest of Tokyo whirls on – it’s all about mindset.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Verse-hopping, sausage fingers, googly eyes… It’s difficult to summarise this film. It’s a comedy, yet earnest in tackling feelings of absurdism and generational trauma that rise through the cracks of everyday life. Powerhouse performances, frenzied visual effects, and an all-encompassing original score by Son Lux, make for a chaotic, cathartic, and ultimately comforting watch for an edgling twenty-something. Your twenties are a crisis of becoming, grappling with wasted potential, always asking “what if?” – but so is the rest of your life. In a world where nothing makes sense, at least we have each other to hold onto.
“Interview: Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)” by Sidewalks TV is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.