The window
The entity that is MTV has obviously changed considerably since the channel first killed the radio star in 1981. While anyone whose birth year starts with a "2" might only know it for reality series or teen soaps, MTV's historical prominence as a conduit between music and mainstream culture cannot be overstated. While their previous efforts to bring that part of their brand to feature filmmaking have only been intermittently successful (oh Crossroads, you were this close to being something I'd willingly plant my flag for), it's been quite a while since they've set their sights on the pop music landscape in any meaningful way. This is why it's a shock that Three Months, their new Paramount+ exclusive film (theatrical is not the realm of the midbudget these days), not only fully embraces that legacy but does something wholly charming with it.
Three Months is a vehicle for Australian twink crooner Troye Sivan, who has been bubbling just under the surface of mainstream pop music since the release of his first studio album in 2015. For reference, he is the type of musician who gets invited to the Met Gala, but also the type whose name is met with a resounding chorus of "who?" by pretty much any straight people you talk to. Sivan is no stranger to being in front of the camera, having garnered his success off the back of a long running YouTube vlog, eventually starring opposite John Cleese in the South African film Spud and its two sequels, also taking minor roles in Boy Erased and - randomly - X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Here, he is playing Caleb, a freshly graduated teenager who works at a rinky-dink convenience store in Hollywood, Florida in 2011. After a bad breakup and a subsequent drunken hookup involving an expired condom with a man who tested HIV positive three days later, Caleb is now waiting to find out if he's positive as well. He has to wait - you guessed it - three months before his system has built up enough antibodies to be detectable, dealing with the stress of this potentially life-changing diagnosis while also handling the normal day-to-day stresses of a teen with college on the horizon.
These stresses involve his grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) potentially deciding to sell the home they have been living in, his estrangement from his icy Orthodox Jewish mother, and the fact that he's slowly drifting apart from his BFF Dara (Brianne Tju) due to a burgeoning flirtation with another young man who is waiting for his test results, an Indian immigrant named Estha (Viveik Kalra).
Three Months uses the idea of the ticking clock as an overarching metaphor for the summer after senior year, when any American teen feels like they're in limbo waiting for their life to begin. The way that the COVID-19 pandemic has given life the feeling of being put on pause indefinitely is also baked into the premise, but the film bends over backward to make it so that you can easily set that consideration aside if you don't want to look at it straight on.
This is all very solid, if not anything you haven't seen before in a hundred indie coming-of-age films. Not even the inherent queerness of the story manages to breathe new life into hoary tropes, because if there's one subject that gay filmmakers have covered every inch of, it's HIV. However, having a structure that has been done before isn't necessarily a flaw. There's a reason people bought Agatha Christie's 45nd novel. And one thing that Three Months brings to the table is the sheer commitment of everyone involved in the project, both in front of and behind the camera.
For one thing, there's not a weak link in the cast (though Judy Greer is predictably wasted in a minor role). This film is a real proving ground for its teen stars, particularly Tju (who previously starred in the justifiably little-seen I Know What You Did Last Summer series on Amazon) and Kalra (who led Gurinder Chadha's ode to Springsteen Blinded by the Light in 2019), who acquit themselves particularly well, showing off their respective abilities to effortlessly walk the film's tightrope of tone, snatching dramatic moments from thin air without letting the mood stray too far from its hangout comedy vibe.
Sivan is also giving a performance that is undeniably good, though he's rarely asked to do anything more than be disaffected and let light glint off his cheekbones, which his music videos have already proven to be his core competency. His chemistry with Kalra is off the charts, though, and the pair's flirtatious banter is an excellent thing for the film to hang its hat on. Ellen Burstyn and Louis Gossett Jr. - who plays her character's partner - also both show up for a few moments apiece to prove they've Still Got It, in case anyone was somehow wondering.
From the technical angle, things are running smoothly as well. Three Months is a film that's unafraid to be colorful, with the combination of pastel-heavy production design and excellent location scouting of various murals provide a necessary backdrop that contrasts wonderfully with Caleb's depression. Indeed, every visual and graphic element of the film is working in tandem to deliver a sort of "pop art meets melting Creamsicle" aesthetic that is entirely satisfying, even if the cinematography plays its ace too early with a tremendously stunning bird's-eye-view of a beach that is unmatched anywhere else in the film.
The music is also possibly one of the best-curated selections MTV has ever delivered, sliding serenely from Troye Sivan original music to David Bowie to Little Richard without batting an eye. The requisite brand synergy (Caleb continuously watches reruns of The Real World) is also folded in so organically that even if MTV had dropped the project, it feels like something that director-screenwriter Jared Frieder would have fought to include no matter what studio picked it up.
All of this strong material does unfortunately still result in a movie that firmly plants itself in the "very good, not great" camp. It's too beholden to too many films that came in the wake of Juno, and that makes it hard to feel like it's not in conversation with a microgenre that is long dead. Even with everything it has going for it, it's not quite doing enough to justify robbing their twee, sarcastic graves. The ending, which is otherwise great, also goes on exactly 15 seconds too long and deflates the whole Thing they were obviously going for, even if it's not actively compromising it.
It's hard to close this review without feeling like I'm panning this film I really really liked, but such is the burden of criticism. Just know that whatever flaws Three Months has, they exist almost entirely in the meta space around the film rather than coming from within the film itself, and I do consider that a solid win, even if it's not a project that's easy to embrace with one's whole heart.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Three Months is a vehicle for Australian twink crooner Troye Sivan, who has been bubbling just under the surface of mainstream pop music since the release of his first studio album in 2015. For reference, he is the type of musician who gets invited to the Met Gala, but also the type whose name is met with a resounding chorus of "who?" by pretty much any straight people you talk to. Sivan is no stranger to being in front of the camera, having garnered his success off the back of a long running YouTube vlog, eventually starring opposite John Cleese in the South African film Spud and its two sequels, also taking minor roles in Boy Erased and - randomly - X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Here, he is playing Caleb, a freshly graduated teenager who works at a rinky-dink convenience store in Hollywood, Florida in 2011. After a bad breakup and a subsequent drunken hookup involving an expired condom with a man who tested HIV positive three days later, Caleb is now waiting to find out if he's positive as well. He has to wait - you guessed it - three months before his system has built up enough antibodies to be detectable, dealing with the stress of this potentially life-changing diagnosis while also handling the normal day-to-day stresses of a teen with college on the horizon.
These stresses involve his grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) potentially deciding to sell the home they have been living in, his estrangement from his icy Orthodox Jewish mother, and the fact that he's slowly drifting apart from his BFF Dara (Brianne Tju) due to a burgeoning flirtation with another young man who is waiting for his test results, an Indian immigrant named Estha (Viveik Kalra).
Three Months uses the idea of the ticking clock as an overarching metaphor for the summer after senior year, when any American teen feels like they're in limbo waiting for their life to begin. The way that the COVID-19 pandemic has given life the feeling of being put on pause indefinitely is also baked into the premise, but the film bends over backward to make it so that you can easily set that consideration aside if you don't want to look at it straight on.
This is all very solid, if not anything you haven't seen before in a hundred indie coming-of-age films. Not even the inherent queerness of the story manages to breathe new life into hoary tropes, because if there's one subject that gay filmmakers have covered every inch of, it's HIV. However, having a structure that has been done before isn't necessarily a flaw. There's a reason people bought Agatha Christie's 45nd novel. And one thing that Three Months brings to the table is the sheer commitment of everyone involved in the project, both in front of and behind the camera.
For one thing, there's not a weak link in the cast (though Judy Greer is predictably wasted in a minor role). This film is a real proving ground for its teen stars, particularly Tju (who previously starred in the justifiably little-seen I Know What You Did Last Summer series on Amazon) and Kalra (who led Gurinder Chadha's ode to Springsteen Blinded by the Light in 2019), who acquit themselves particularly well, showing off their respective abilities to effortlessly walk the film's tightrope of tone, snatching dramatic moments from thin air without letting the mood stray too far from its hangout comedy vibe.
Sivan is also giving a performance that is undeniably good, though he's rarely asked to do anything more than be disaffected and let light glint off his cheekbones, which his music videos have already proven to be his core competency. His chemistry with Kalra is off the charts, though, and the pair's flirtatious banter is an excellent thing for the film to hang its hat on. Ellen Burstyn and Louis Gossett Jr. - who plays her character's partner - also both show up for a few moments apiece to prove they've Still Got It, in case anyone was somehow wondering.
From the technical angle, things are running smoothly as well. Three Months is a film that's unafraid to be colorful, with the combination of pastel-heavy production design and excellent location scouting of various murals provide a necessary backdrop that contrasts wonderfully with Caleb's depression. Indeed, every visual and graphic element of the film is working in tandem to deliver a sort of "pop art meets melting Creamsicle" aesthetic that is entirely satisfying, even if the cinematography plays its ace too early with a tremendously stunning bird's-eye-view of a beach that is unmatched anywhere else in the film.
The music is also possibly one of the best-curated selections MTV has ever delivered, sliding serenely from Troye Sivan original music to David Bowie to Little Richard without batting an eye. The requisite brand synergy (Caleb continuously watches reruns of The Real World) is also folded in so organically that even if MTV had dropped the project, it feels like something that director-screenwriter Jared Frieder would have fought to include no matter what studio picked it up.
All of this strong material does unfortunately still result in a movie that firmly plants itself in the "very good, not great" camp. It's too beholden to too many films that came in the wake of Juno, and that makes it hard to feel like it's not in conversation with a microgenre that is long dead. Even with everything it has going for it, it's not quite doing enough to justify robbing their twee, sarcastic graves. The ending, which is otherwise great, also goes on exactly 15 seconds too long and deflates the whole Thing they were obviously going for, even if it's not actively compromising it.
It's hard to close this review without feeling like I'm panning this film I really really liked, but such is the burden of criticism. Just know that whatever flaws Three Months has, they exist almost entirely in the meta space around the film rather than coming from within the film itself, and I do consider that a solid win, even if it's not a project that's easy to embrace with one's whole heart.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: coming-of-age, indies and pseudo-indies, teen movies
