Carrie Pilby (Susan Johnson, 2016): USA

Reviewed by Nodoka Kobayashi. Viewed at Fiesta 5 Theater at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2017.

Carrie Pilby is based on a fiction novel. The story is about an intelligent girl who is just 20 years old and already graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18. I was so fascinated by the character of Carrie because she is just a normal girl other than her higher intelectual standard.

Carrie Pilby is the main character of this movie obviously and the story is about change of her life. This change is the same thing that everyone experiences between kid and adult. Her intelligence is absolutely higher than most of adults who are older than her, but in terms of social life, she has some difficulties. She loves reading books and she spends almost all free time to read books. Because of this problem, she starts to go to therapist to talk. The therapist suggests her to do some things and wrote down them as a list for her. She starts doing the tasks to be more social like she does homework.

The nice point of this movie is that throughout the entire of this film, we feel something peaceful. The tasks she has to put check on them are not that much difficult, but she takes it seriously and just give it a try to get done because she is basically a good student and a good learner. I found that I am hoping her good and I empathize her a lot. In addition, we do not know who is going to be the one important boy to her in the end because all the boys and men showing up seem to be nice and she enjoys talk to them. Especially teenage girls might have similar experinces and understand how the first time to have boyfriend is awkward and we have no idea what to do. For teenagers, this kind of things are huge deal and Carrie’s various facial expression expresses how her mind is messed by new experiences like most of teenage gilrs. The film entirely seems so adorable and I would like to watch it again.