If “Girls” taught us anything (before it became terrible), it’s that urban 20-something women are just as confused, lovelorn, immature, and drunk as their drooling male counterparts. When I first read the press release for “Fort Tilden” — the film is out in New York and Los Angeles theaters on August 14, and is about two 25-year old Brooklyn ladies who embark on an obstacle-laden bicycle ride to the titular beach, a sort of topless-friendly hipster enclave adjacent to Jacob Riis — it seemed like a disaster. But having watched it (on my computer, late at night, while toggling between Facebook on my desktop and Tinder on my cell phone), I have to admit that it adeptly nails a certain facet of New York City in the 21st century, something hovering between boundless optimism and bottomless despair. I mention my own techno-distractions only because they’re relevant: “Fort Tilden”’s protagonists are constantly vacillating between IRL and their text-message dissections of same, many of which blip onto the screen during the film. Like anyone their age, these days, to be caught in this space is not newsworthy: Where you are is never exactly where you want to be. “Fort Tilden” isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but it is a worthwhile addition to a growing canon — one that would have to include “Girls,” along with “Broad City,” the film “Frances Ha,” and the Vimeo-to-HBO property “High Maintenance.” The quandary is that so many of these narratives ultimately seem to be imparting a moral lesson, which roughly translates as Get the hell out, and quick! Grow up, in some place where growing up is allowed, and normal!“Fort Tilden” is the feature-length debut of writer-directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, who started making it when they were 29 and 26, respectively. “We were leaving film school,” Rogers explained. “We were at a crossroads ourselves, and some of those quarter-life-crisis feelings may have influenced the way we wrote.” They consider the movie to be a satire, but a “sympathetic” one. The initial plot — a journey from Williamsburg to the beach — was always the main idea, and it originally began as the seed for a web series before being expanded into a feature. “Fort Tilden is a notoriously difficult destination to get to,” Bliss said, “and all of our friends have stories of their mishaps trying to get there.”“In their eyes, it’s a playground that looks more like an art-installation than a place where people lived,” Rogers added. “Fort Tilden has so much history, and I’m sure the history could care less about visitors like Allie and Harper. There’s something funny about characters swooping in on something that has plenty of history and deciding they have ownership of it.”It can be hard to stomach the film’s spoiled protagonists, whose default expressive mode is a sort of extended whine. “Fort Tilden” isn’t a coming-of-age story — as the directors are quick to point out, it only takes place over a single day — but tough lessons come fast and furious. “The movie also follows in a tradition that satirizes class,” Rogers said. “There have been plenty of films about the follies of rich people. If money can afford you a protected point of view, and that point-of-view is challenged, then your whole world can turn upside down.” Harper, a struggling artist of uncertain talent, is subsisting on her father’s dime; he runs a Halliburton-style company in India, and when the girls’ cabdriver en route to the beach (after one of their bikes is stolen) hears its name, he kicks them out on the side of the road and loudly berates Harper’s family’s Third World-sapping awfulness. Later, they find some abandoned kittens and decide to rescue them, before realizing that kittens are easy on Instagram, not so much in reality. (It must be noted that “Fort Tilden” features the single best scene in modern cinema involving two grown women passionately arguing while festooned with adorably fuzzy cats.)Directors Sara-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers.“This place is awesome,” they marvel of Tilden’s Brutalist decrepitude. “It’s such a piece of shit.” (It’s not hard to imagine Allie and Harper, in a hypothetical sequel, discovering the untamed wonders of Detroit.) The boys they’ve followed down to the beach to do Ecstasy with turn out to be high school seniors: “Those women were, like… 30!” the boys’ equally young, topless friends mutter, running away, giggling. Allie’s plan of traveling to Liberia to join the Peace Corps turns out to be a bullshit fantasy. The film sputters out in this liminal point between drastic self-revelation and The Future, whatever that might look like: Harper and Allie laze in their apartment, listening to a “tediously adorable,” twee pop song written by two of their friends; a paperback copy of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” lies neglected on the couch. (“Change is complicated and takes time,” Rogers said. “It takes a lot of growing up to grow up.”) As a 34-year-old Brooklynite who feels a bit uncomfortably close to the target demographic of “Fort Tilden,” it’s hard to know how to process the film. At the very least, it’s a highly entertaining contribution to the body of gently self-hating entertainment centered on the world’s most self-loving city — but where do you go from there?
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