Over/Under Review

Silver’s unique voice feels very personal, and the performances from the two child actors are fantastic.

Childhood innocence is shown to be a fleeting few years in Over/Under, directed by Sophia Silver, who co-writes a tight script for two young stars alongside Sianni Rosenstock.

Stella (Anastasia Veronia Lee) and Violet (Emajean Bulock) are best friends who only get to see each other when their families visit a Summer House for holidays. They spend their days here running around catching butterflies together, making wishes, playing, and being kids. Their lives away from each other are shown to be a lot different. Over the few short years charted in Over/Under, we see how these young girls have to deal with body dysmorphia, societal pushes into sexual exploration, and dealing with death and parents’ separation.

Though the two girls are shown to be their safe place together, when they’re dealing with different hardships, Violet doesn’t have any friends at school and is bullied for different factors, including her clothes and not fitting into typical girl-code fashion choices. At the same time, Stella has a mother dealing with a cancer remission. Over the years, the films cover the girls staying close but begin to fade away from what they each were, in particular Violet, who, in a desire to fit in, begins to follow the popular girl at her school and attempts to pass on the same behaviour and focuses on Stella: boys, fashion, specific words and phrases. They’re two girls trying to fit into an adult world all too soon.

Although Over/Under doesn’t tackle any particular subject matter I haven’t seen in other films in the past few years, director Silver’s unique voice feels very personal, and the performances from the two child actors are fantastic.

(Screener provided to Explosion Network.
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