Director: Zoe Eisenberg
Writer: Zoe Eisenberg
Stars: Mitzi Akaha, Laird Akeo, Jessica Jade Andres
Synopsis: Alienated by friends and family for her lack of ambition, 29-year-old Misha finds a dangerous acceptance in a bright 18-year-old athlete who mistakes her for a fellow student.
There’s a complicated point of intersection between teenagers and unambitious adults. Teenagers wish for the freedom that adulthood brings and unambitious adults often embrace it. The sad fact is that neither particularly thinks about the consequences of adulthood.
That space is where Chaperone exists. Misha (Mitzi Akaha) is a woman who has adult responsibilities, but chooses which ones to accept and when. It’s this laissez faire attitude that gives the appearance and assumption of youth. On a blind date, Misha is mistaken for much younger than she is because she’s on a path without a goal. It’s when she meets high school senior Jake (Laird Akeo) that she feels that what she’s lacking isn’t a detriment. She’s not judged by him and nothing is asked of her except to be.
We all know what will happen when relationships start with a lie, but Chaperone builds into something more than just that avalanche of poor judgement. The well plotted, ultimately devious script by Zoe Eisenberg lays out a path where it’s easy for Misha to tell a lie because really she’s only telling one big one. Jake infers everything about Misha’s age. He takes for granted how youthful she looks and Misha never disabuses him of his perception. Jake wants a cool, mysterious girlfriend. He wants everything she can offer him.
That’s where Eisenberg’s eloquent direction comes into play, too. There is such a fine line to walk when a character is trying to deceive another. It’s in the lingering shots on Misha’s face or the delicate, lengthy pauses when she wants to break the spell, but can’t bring herself to. It’s those moments that make that inevitable fall so much more crushing in the end and they’re layered so beautifully into the fabric of each shot.
If there is a fault with the film it’s that it takes so long for Misha’s downfall. The film dips so heavily into farcical territory that you almost wonder if you should laugh at the situation. The one part that you think it will all come tumbling down is at the party Misha throws at her house for her new underage pals. The party is broken up by the police, including Kana (Ioane Goodhue), husband to Misha’s friend and boss, Kenzie (Jessica Jade Andres). Kana knows Misha’s age, he knows the people running from Misha’s house are underage, but there’s a distraction and enough veiled language that Misha’s secret stays that way. The fact that Jake and his friends are too wasted to catch the subtleties in what Kana is shouting at Misha. This is the only way to explain away how they don’t understand that the ID that they discovered and wanted to be fake is real and Misha’s real age. It’s a little too far from most of the grounded reality of the story.
Grounding the story is helped by Mitzi Akaha. She is such a gifted performer. She’s able to convey so much with a look or a smile. She balances the deep emotional toll of Misha’s lie with the complicated euphoria of the world she’s living in free of those who try to make her realize life requires a path. Akaha is quick, charming, and engaging in a way that you can’t take your eyes off her.
Films like Chaperone take a very melodramatic or farcical situation and make it into something more mundane. It isn’t that this mundanity is a detriment. It’s that it is often more intriguing than the high drama a story like this would usually elicit. These characters are trying their best to live their lives in the way they see fit and it just so happens that something a bit untoward, in terms of social norms and not technically legal norms, has come along to completely upend those little lives. Chaperone is like a long cringe at a situation, but as it goes on you realize that that cringe is because we think that’s how we’re supposed to react. Eisenberg and her crew give us a more nuanced approach that’s worthy of contemplation, discussion, and praise.
