Do you remember high-school life on film before Euphoria? When kids didn’t all host their own sex-cam shows, and play out their violent BDSM fantasies in their lunch breaks, and schtup each other’s parents? True, it’s hard to cast your mind back – what’s seen cannot be unseen! – but if you want to be reminded of those hazy, innocent days when teenagers’ main preoccupation was how much sex they weren’t having, then writer-creator Pamela Ribon and director Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s charming half-hour animated film, My Year of Dicks – which is in the running for “best animated short film” at this year’s Oscars – is a small, nostalgic joy.
Based on Ribon’s memoir, Notes to Boys (And Other Things I Shouldn’t Share in Public), it follows Pam, a 15-year-old girl in Houston, Texas, in the 1990s, as she begins her quest to shed herself of that Atlas stone of adolescent life: her virginity. Divided into five chapters, what quickly becomes apparent is that the “dicks” in the film's title are not actual penises, although those are mentioned too (and can we just for a moment celebrate the fact that some earnest "and-the-nominees-are" thesp in black tie is going to have to say it out loud), and refers to the less-than-ideal candidates that Pam considers (a guy who sharpens his nails into talons; another whose having some sexual confusions of his own), all under the worried gaze of her low-key best friend, Sam.
The film, which has already picked up prizes at festivals including Raindance and SXSW and is available to watch here, harks back to the sweeter, funnier tradition of teenage cherry-popping narratives, from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and Superbad to The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Never Have I Ever…, when teenagers worried about whether they’d know how to “do it right”, and had embarrassing practice runs in front of their bedroom mirrors, and excruciating conversations about masturbation with their parents. You know, the good old days! (And if you ever felt a bit ick watching Euphoria, the reports on what's going doing on creator Sam Levinson's new project, The Idol, will not reassure you...)
It's also refreshing to see a line-up of genuinely interesting animated shorts, including Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s The Flying Sailor, based on the true story of a seaman in Nova Scotia who was caught in an explosion that blew him over a kilometre away, and who lived to tell the tale; and Lachlan Pendragon’s decidedly strange An Ostrich Told Me The World is Fake and I Think I Believe It, a kind of Wallace-and-Gromit-meets-The-Matrix stop-motion film about an office worker who realises he’s a puppet whose face can come off. The frontrunner for the prize, though – and by a mile – is still Peter Baynton’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, a star-studded adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s behemoth of a children’s book, which has already won the Bafta and is perfect for those who enjoy a barrage of cosy aphorisms over an actual story line. For us though, it’s Dicks all the way.
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
