Directed by:
Gia CoppolaCinematography:
Autumn DuraldComposer:
Devonté HynesCast:
Andrew Garfield, Maya Hawke, Colleen Camp, Chris Messina, Jason Schwartzman, Alexa Demie, Nat Wolff, Johnny Knoxville, Trevor White, Jefery Levy, Jake Paul (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Just above Hollywood Boulevard lives Frankie, a young woman in her early 20s trying to navigate who she wants to be. With the death of Frankie’s father still lingering, Frankie knows she wants to do something of meaning but isn’t sure how and with the world in a current state of so much content and narcissism, it’s hard to not “compare and despair.” Stuck working as a bartender at a corner comedy club with her best friend Jake, Frankie questions what people today really value. It isn’t until she has a few cosmic run-ins with the mysterious Link, a man that seems to live life without rules that it inspires Frankie to film him and upload his anti-mainstream rants onto the internet. Together, with the help of Jake, this unlikely band of outsiders rise to internet stardom. However, it’s hard to stay sane when the pressure of relevancy becomes important and new characters, like manager Mark, start making demands to bring in money. To make matters more complicated, Frankie and Link start getting romantically entwined. Frankie watches as Link becomes the epitome of everything he once denounced. It isn’t until Link publicly humiliates a young fan Isabel and Jake quits the team that Frankie really questions if she is also becoming the monster she helped create. A love story of being in love with someone who doesn’t love themselves set against the new emerging culture of today’s world. (Venice International Film Festival)
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Reviews (2)
If Gia Coppola had developed the central idea of her script in a little greater depth, this could have been a very powerful and disturbing movie touching on the issue of the influence of virtual reality and social networks on the real lives of young people. What we get is more of an exhibition of Andrew Garfield, but his acting mastery makes it worth giving this unusual movie a chance. I was also intrigued by Maya Hawke, who cannot deny her famous parents’ genes. (70%)
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Mainstream is a not-so-amazing journey through the internet. Gia Coppola has made a modern variation on A Face in the Crowd, But whereas that ageless and phenomenal classic focuses on the interconnection between the media, celebrity and politics, Mainstream, characteristically of its time, is concerned only with social networks and thus the purely egocentric circles of self-presentation and the paradox of moral authorities heralding an awakening on the stultifying platforms. Coppola peculiarly works with both conceptual and formalistic literalness, and creates a simple duality of YouTuber-ish hyperactive evil versus indie alternative from the heart. On the other hand, certain themes and narrative patterns are simply repeated in culture and every generation has its own works that, although they may later remain forgotten in the mass of the historical flow of media, are formative for the young viewers of the given time. I thus believe that what Floundering once was for me, Mainstream will be for some of today’s teens.
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