The French Canadian coming-of-age animated feature, When Adam Changes (Adam Change Lentement), written and directed by Joel Vaudreuil, paints a bullseye onto the worst times of anyone’s life and takes a shot. The titular Adam (Simon LaCroix) is a 15-year-old boy growing up in Quebec in what looks like either the twilight of the 1980s or the beginning of the ’90s. Ever since hitting his teenage years, Adam’s body has been changing. He is so tall he slouches, and shirts cannot cover his elongated torso.
School bully Glazer (Marc Beaupre) and his gang torture him in the restroom, forcing Adam to take off his shirt to see his male boobs. On top of this, Adam’s grandmother, Ange (Isabelle Brouillette), always insults him about his weight, constantly calling him a “porker.” Right before summer vacation, Ange dies, devastating Adam’s mother, Gizele (Isabelle Brouillette). Sister Karine (Julianne Cote) doesn’t want to speak at the funeral, so Adam gets stuck with the task.
Meanwhile, his dad, Alain (Antone Vezina), wants Adam to work housesitting and mowing lawns all summer. But all Adam wants to do is date his crush, classmate Jeanne (Noemie O’Farrell). However, she is going out with Glazer. So he sits in his room, watching one action VHS after another. He has no idea what’s in store for him this summer. Neither do you.
Vaudreuil’s cartoony drawings throughout When Adam Changes are both grotesque and inviting. The body exaggerations are some of the best expressionistic depictions of those awkward teenage years yet. The puberty pretzel Adam is twisted into is recognizable. The filmmaker further impresses by getting right how tiny the universe of a 15-year-old is. By focusing on mundane details, audiences really feel how Adam’s tiny patch of reality seems so huge and the boundaries so inescapable. Neighborhoods seem like empires, with the right to existence determined by feral classmates.
“…all Adam wants to do is date his crush, classmate Jeanne. However, she is going out with Glazer…”
All of this makes the film the perfect antidote to teen movie overdose. Tired of overly pretty 22-year-olds pretending to be iddy biddy teenagers having to toil their way to the school dance? Seeing Adam having to endure transforming into a hormone Quasimodo with all the ridicule is much closer to the horrors facing real teens. It is not a period in my life I relish revisiting, which made my enjoyment of this all the more surprising. There is so much the director captures perfectly in detail. This looks a lot like that long-awaited Yummy Fur adaptation.
Everything is depicted in a measured, dry way, making all the humor vibrate. This feels like a French King of the Hill. There is a marvelous variety of tones. Boring reality is seasoned with fantasy and dream sequences that borrow from that reality to enhance it. There are also a couple of very dark sequences, almost dipping into horror territory. There is also a great deal of drama to be had, dispersed in places you would not think.
Plus, the throwback to the analog era is rigorously accurate. I love how all of Adam’s movies are recorded off cable, as this was before sell-through and used VHS was a thing. Also shown is the communal experience of watching a game show together, knowing the answer when the contestant doesn’t. Everything is punctuated by a fantastic retro synth soundtrack, similar to the scores of the action movies on display.
When everything Vaudreuil offers up is measured, I realized that his coming-of-age parable is one of the most realistic movies I have seen, and it is a cartoon to boot. When Adam Changes is a strange breath of fresh air. The film will resonate with adults who have been there and comfort teens going through something similar right now.
"…some of the best expressionistic depictions of those awkward teenage years yet."
