Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

A Holden Caulfield for the 21st century
James Cameron's story SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU is coming of age tale that is, at turns, funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated. As adapted for the screen by director Roberto Faenza with Cameron and Dahlia Heyman this becomes an experimental film that will delight many and confuse some. The cast is excellent and once the audience moves into the rhythm of the narrated story it is difficult not to re-live youth and pull for the lad whose story this is.

James Sveck (Toby Regbo) is a lonely young teenager who is tortured by his grossly unstable home environment and is fraught with hating people, suicidal thoughts, depression, and the preference for solitude. It is the summer before he goes off to college at Brown University and he is conflicted: his vain lothario father (Peter Gallagher) insists that he go to college, his gallery owner mother (Marcia Gay Harden) has just returned form Las Vegas and her third failed marriage - this time to a compulsive gambler...

"Someday" Shines in its Subtlety
"Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You" captures how being an introverted teenager feels TO the teenager. Much of the conflict lies in the internal battle the protagonist has with himself, though the dysfunction in the world around him (i.e. his crazy family) amplifies his feelings of not belonging. The lead, Toby Regbo, displays phenomenal prowess in his portrayal of the confused James, who seems to be drowning in the struggles of being 17.

That being said, one needs to enter the film in an independent / art film frame of mind. Though focusing on a high school protagonist, this isn't "Superbad" or "Mean Girls" where the concrete goals are getting the girl/guy or throwing the best party of their high school lives. "Someday" is more subtle, an emotional look at how one teenager's isolation truly feels like the end of the world to him. And who hasn't felt that at one point?

Plus, an awesome cameo by Parks & Rec's Aubrey Plaza :)

Lovely, thoughtful, engaging film.
OK - disclaimer...I'll start off by saying that I'm often drawn to films like this one - I like the sense that a story is intended as a vehicle to explore a particular set of ideas & feelings, and isn't just an end in itself. To be honest, I'm probably more likely to be forgiving of its flaws because I like what the filmmakers are attempting.
This is a coming-of-age story that's aware of the idea that a boy doesn't go from a child to a man in some grand oversimplified moment that so many movies of this ilk resort to using. In reality that process is often a long, awkward and sometimes painful arc that this one thankfully takes the time to view with a thoughtful eye. This film is exploring the latter part of that time in a young man's life where huge choices about one's life are looming, and the writing allows for a fitting amount of complexity and subtlety in the way those experiences are portrayed.
On the downside, the writers draw from some very trite characters to fill...

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