When high school student Annie heads to a new school, she finds herself surrounded by hostile faces. And needle-in-the-haystack Jules. The two attractive outsiders immediately strike up a kinship and a secret flame broils, leading them down forbidden passageways of mutual lust and peddled cajolery.

The debut feature from John Carchietta, Teenage Cocktail is an endearing, mischievous youth in revolt chronicle led by two sultry breakout performances from stars Nichole Bloom and Fabienne Therese. An experimental independent film that seeks to both titillate and enervate its captive audience, Teenage Cocktail spins a familiar suburban fantasy from its modest pinnings, resulting in a suggestive if recognizable saga of adolescent dissent.

Jules (Therese) dreams of New York. Between stuffing her face with hot dogs and steaming street pretzels, she’ll join a dance company, live adjacent to Central Park and wake each day to bright lights and the big city. Her hormone-influenced fantasy is cheesy by her own admission, the overblown fantasy of jejune romanticism. Matched with the milquetoast rebellion of Annie, the pair’s nerves steel in the face of prying, overbearing mothers and Americana little village values. Together, the two set their sights on running away hand-in-hand, leaving their false skins behind with everything else they’ve grown to know.

Their budding relationship is a pedigree of experimentation; a chronicling of emerging femininity privy to 21st century tools. The quick-born union between Annie and Jules is endearing, genuine and sweet even when it turns enterprising. As their taboo relationship rubs against small-town morality, the two turn to webcam modeling to finance their escape from conservative trappings, taking them down a perilous road in which they don masks and transform into Clementine and Kitty; the whitebread makings of a convincingly culpable coupling.

At times, their affair is melodic – take Z Berg’s somber ballad “I Fall For The Same Face” erupting as the two fawn and fall over one another, gleefully ignoring the fact that the webcam is rolling, the semi-dubious cha-chings of PayPal deposits sounding in the foreground. Others, it’s erotically awkward – the two unwittingly reel less-than-meets-the-eye Frank (an appropriately sad and scummy Pat Healy) in a last-ditch effort to escape the clutches of school administrator Joseph Damone (AJ Bowen).

A tale of pretending and over-extension spirals into questions of fidelity, blackmail and greed, each of which takes the unfortunate shape of inexperience and desperation. The script from director John Carchietta, Sage Bannick and Chris Sivertson (prompted from Amelia Yokel’s original story) puts the characters in challenging corners though fails to deliver the cathartic emotional resolution some characters deserve, even in the face of violent retribution.

CONCLUSION: Sexy coming-of-age misadventure ‘Teenage Cocktail’ explores the textured landscape of feminine power in the context of webcam modeling and questionable sexual orientation. Sharp chemistry between leads Nichole Bloom and Fabienne Therese lends John Carchietta’s feature needed energy and realism but can’t quite overcome the script’s somewhat mechanical turnstile ambition.

B-

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