Tart

_The misadventures of upper-class teens at a prep school in Manhattan_ The focus is on 17 years-old Cat (Dominique Swain) striving for the attention of some boy (Brad Renfro), dealing with her friends and struggling parents, as well as persecution for her secret heritage. It gives you a world you probably didn't know about being a mixed-up ‘rich’ kid in Manhattan and the shores of East Hampton in 1984. I was interested in it because it struck me as a girls’ school version of “Dead Poets Society.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the heart and is more tedious than compelling with emphasis on recreational drugs, relationship troubles and even crime. Parts of it reminded me of “Swimming” with Lauren Ambrose, which came out the year prior, but it’s not as all-around palatable. It’s worth seeing just for Dominique, who was 19 during shooting. On the other end of the gender spectrum, Brad Renfro was 17 during filming and smacks of a teenage Brando. Regrettably, drug addiction hampered his career, and he died of a heroin overdose eight years later. It runs about 1h 32m and was shot in Nov-Dec 1999 in Manhattan with some good sequences involving Central Park, as well as Toronto (probably mostly interiors and the East Hampton sequence). GRADE: B-