After a life spent in anonymity, Mandy Lane suddenly becomes the object of desire of all her schoolmates. Winning her over is no easy feat, and so far all attempts have proved unsuccessful. By her side she has her one great friend Emmett, a friendship born and solidified during the time when she was not yet in the public eye. Red and company invite her to spend a weekend at her family's ranch, hoping that someone will finally be able to seduce her and make her their personal trophy.
A killer lurking nearby will turn the already arduous task into a real struggle for survival.
Mandy Lane is the holy grail, the too-high grape that makes the fox desist from taking it, the last pristine island, an Atlantean city , the symbol of the elusive and unattainable. Thanks to Jonathan Levine's work, these utopias take on human connotations and are shaped into the features of a figure of statuesque beauty, a novel Eve who wanders the corridors of a school arousing unprecedented sensations in anyone who observes her movements.
Ordinary mortals, seeing such a transcendental being walking a few steps away from them, delude themselves into thinking they can easily get into his good graces and, in an icaric flight, demonstrate even more firmly how wretched they are in their weaknesses and aspirations, failing to value and keep their distance from a cyclonic force capable of sweeping them away without a second thought.
Avoiding to place herself on the thrones and pedestals that would also compete with her, this deity decides to make herself seemingly accessible to the eyes of those who ardently desire her, carrying out a project as subtle as it is cunning. Although she already knows the vile purposes of the humans around her, the sublime Mandy decides to camouflage herself among her Prometheans in order to test them, despite the fact that she is well assured of future disappointing end results. Her foresight even manages to foresee instances when the card of servility and absolute obedience is attempted, but the fate of these unwary ones will not be unlike that of their more shameless comrades.
Stripping the story of these mythological considerations, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane remains a wonderful apologia on diversity, but a diversity that is inconceivable to those who persist in assuming a pretentious perspective of normality and fail to see beyond the classic terms of opposition. The film presents roles with incurable blindness, as is shown in an emblematic scene of violence, unable to separate themselves from their beliefs and abandon their now futile social strategies. The characters will inevitably be architects of their untimely end in their insistence on clinging to their flaws and frailties, not caring that their executioner can never feel the slightest compassion for them. Completely unaware that they find themselves in a devious game bigger than themselves, the victims on duty are literally sacrificed at the altar of Mandy, an unimpeachable icon of purity and virtuousness.
Forman's screenplay proves merciless in sketching the young personalities that populate the universe of his creation, endowing them with a disturbing patheticity because they lack the slightest trace of self-esteem and are predictably destined for early destruction. In this context, the figure of Mandy Lane has the very specific role of embodying the hatred and revulsion directed toward her fellow human beings, in the borderline case in which none of them is actually capable of understanding and accepting a character different from their own. For this and other reasons the story takes on the characters of a 'clever subliminal revenge.
The realization of such a project finds easy ground in the delineation of a hierarchical, bee-like society in which Mandy naturally plays the queen and all her suitors try in one way or another to revere her or otherwise make themselves interesting in her sight. In this context, many typical juvenile situations are pilloried and turned into cruel sequences of violence, confirming the impression that the screenwriter has no particular appreciation for the adolescent populace.
The ending is also filled with concepts to be brought to light, beginning with the choice of the only mature individual who has shown himself capable of not succumbing to his sexual urges and holding high the value of his conduct. This decision proves to be anything but accidental in the narrative structure of the work; on the contrary, it stands as a clear signal of closure of a previous life chapter made up of hardships and dissatisfactions. This conclusion is also significant from a metafilmic point of view: it is intended to put a stone on the overexploited and decadent teen slasher genre and try to put a twist on a subject in search of new inspiration.
In this sense All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a twilight work, the last sunset waiting for a new radiant and vital dawn, a moment you wish would never end. This mood of melancholy is underscored by the splendid soundtrack, the result of careful and precise selection so that the act of recalling the memory of a particular scene is not without its musical accompaniment.
Not surprisingly, such a film has not sparked as much hype as Cravenian Scream: Levine's magnificent work needs no great introduction indeed because it will appeal primarily to the genre's great admirers, those with heart and brains and able to look beyond the surface and unearth all the merits that are not apparent on a first viewing. Like a siren calling from the depths of the abyss, re-watching All the boys love Mandy Lane for the second time will be anything but an obligation: rather a sweet death...
Review by Cerberus
