Spoiler Alert: FOXFIRE means never having to say you're sorry.
THE BOOK-Written by Joyce Carol Oates, released 1993
THE MOVIE(S)-Directed by Annette Haywood-Carter, written by Elizabeth White, released 1996
Directed & written by Laurent Cantet, released 2012
THE STORY-The "revolution" is coming! So sez Margaret Sandovksy, better known as "Legs," leader of FOXFIRE. FOXFIRE is not a girl gang, it is the girl gang. The war is over, but the battles burn on.
MIND THE GAP-FOXFIRE--yes, all caps throughout--is a patience-tester of a book. The run-on sentences and erratic punctuation have repelled multiple readers over the years. FOXFIRE is a rampaging fable of smokes, shots, stabs, subjection, and speed. FOXFIRE is an ode to motion.
The first FF film nails the motion, at least. The kinetics are relocated and updated. Instead of a tiny industrial town in upstate NY during the Nifty Fifties, the action takes place in suburban Portland during the Naughty Nineties--just in time for riot grrrl!
The core of misogyny is discomfort with proudly sexual women. And if she doesn't match the established standard of beauty, uh oh....
The FOXFIRE girls are hard to love, and harder to hate. They're teenagers, and thus still in the phase of life where the truth about truth (that it's malleability varies from person to person, from place to place) eludes them.
Queer people are the best dancers.
Both films are sincere and well-made. One stands too close, the other wanders too far. One a touch too loud, one a smidge too soft. One amateurish to a fault, one mannered to a fault. One has no outstanding performances, while one boasts two--then-unknown Angelina Jolie as firestarter Legs and Jenny Shimizu as butch wonder Goldie. One prominently features a Candlebox song, one does not prominently feature a Candlebox song.
BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Nothing featuring Candlebox can ever hope to be better in any circumstance. But that's not the only fault with '96 FOXFIRE. In its quest to flaunt these bad news babes in the alternative age, the script dampens the very blaze in they were forged. Legs isn't some rando, she's a lieutenant, training a besotted squad in the indelicate art of dissent, nudging and biting and kicking all the way. More than a lark foisted upon schoolmates by a tough sexy drifter, FOXFIRE meant the world to these rejects. It heated their blood, chilled their sweat. The 2012 version understood this, admired it, and devoted itself to the devotion. If only it were in more adventurous hands! The book is a heavy resistance band, but if you stick with the workout, you'll definitely notice a difference.
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