Film Review: "My Old Ass"

Megan Park's sophomore feature is a poignant and funny rumination on growing up and finding oneself, grounded by terrific performances from Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza.

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Warning: Some spoilers for the film follow.

These days it can be quite an ordeal trying to find a film that is under two hours but still manages to tell a self-contained story that is satisfying in its own right. It’s even harder to find one that actually has richness, depth, and emotional authenticity. 

May I present, then, My Old Ass. 

Don’t let the (slightly crass) title fool you. This film, written and directed by Megan Park, is a touching and expertly polished little gem of a film, one that reminds us of the power and importance of cinema as a medium for self-exploration and engaging with ourselves as people. As Kyndall Cunningham recently noted in Vox, there’s a lot to be said for the middlebrow movie, and it’s my hope that the people will keep talking about this particular middlebrow film for quite some time to come. After all, Hollywood, and the rest of us, need more movies like this to bring us together and give us something to talk about.

When My Old Ass begins, young Elliott (Maisy Stella)  is enjoying her last summer on her family’s cranberry farm in Canada. After getting high on a generous helping of shrooms, she is shocked to come face-to-face with an older version of herself (played by the inimitable Aubrey Plaza) and, after getting over the weirdness of it all, they start to bond, with 39-year-old Elliott leaving her number in 18-year-old Elliott’s phone. In addition to all of the jokes and camaraderie, however, her older self gives her a stern warning: stay away from a guy named Chad. As it turns out, however, the reasons for that warning are more tragic than either younger Elliott or the viewer could possibly have imagined, and things really get interesting once she meets Percy Hynes White’s Chad, a young man working on her father’s farm for the summer. 

My Old Ass is sweet and tender, funny and heartbreaking, and it features some extraordinary performances from both Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza. While the former is perfect as the young Elliott, someone who is just figuring her shit out in every single way, the latter is at her absolute best as the older version of Elliott. There are glimpses of the tumult of the future–in one notable exchange, she rushes her kids to the basement while sirens wail in the distance, and she remarks that salmon is no longer a thing and people aren’t allowed to have three kids–but she never loses her wry sense of humor. There’s a haunted soulfulness to Plaza’s performance that is apparent in every scene in which she appears, even as she never lets us lose sight of the fact that she is also very much a comedic actress (more on that in a moment). 

There’s immediate chemistry between Stella and White, and they perfectly capture the giddiness of newfound teenage love, that strange and heady blend of awkward and endearing. It all culminates in the strange, almost supernatural moment in which both versions of Elliott come face-to-face with Chad, who doesn’t seem to recognize this older version of his new love (just one of the many things about this film’s story that you just have to roll with). Despite the ridiculousness of it, however, it’s a moment of profound pathos as older Elliott, given a chance to reunite with the man she loved in the past, embraces him before leaving. If you don’t feel a sob ripped out of your chest during this scene, then I have to raise some serious questions as to whether you are a feeling human being or really nothing more than an automaton. 

Moreover, this is also a very funny film, with several laugh-out-loud moments that add layers of levity to its more somber underpinnings. Stella has an infectious energy that is irresistible, perfectly capturing the sense of devil-may-care ingenuousness that is the province of the teen on the cusp of becoming a fully-fledged adult. Plaza, of course, continues to show why she is one of the most talented comedic actresses of her generation, making the most out of her time on the screen. She’s certainly having a very strong couple of years–between this, Agatha All Along, and The White Lotus–and I love the fact that she was able to build on her success in Parks and Recreation to reach greater and greater heights. As such, she’s the perfect oracle for the younger version of herself, even as she also has to reckon with the fact that sometimes you really do just have to let people love, even if that means you’re going to get your heart broken.

The poignant romance between Elliott and Chad isn’t the only thing about this film that tugs on the heartstrings, however. Indeed, as much as it’s about learning to let go of one’s fear of the future in pursuit of loving the present, it’s also about letting go of other things, too. A secondary plot involves Elliott’s outrage at learning that her dad is planning on selling the farm. While she had no intention of taking over ownership of it, she had always assumed that it would be there for her whenever she felt like coming back home. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still grappling with this at 40, or maybe it’s that, like Elliott, I ended up leaving my hometown and never really moved back, but this whole storyline just hit me right in the feels. 

Cinematographer Kristen Correll superbly captures the beauty of the Canadian landscape, ably conveying the sun-drenched lassitude of late summer, when the world seems perfectly poised on the cusp between the past and the future. This is a time of evenings spent on the porch having heart-to-hearts with parents, as Elliott does with her mother, as each of them reckon with what’ll mean for her to be independent. It’s also a time of embracing all that life has to offer, in all of its joy and sorrow, its beauty and its loss. 

At its root, My Old Ass is a film all about finding oneself, about reckoning with the fact that leaving one’s home behind–even if it’s what you want and even if it means that you’ll have more chances to flourish and grow as a person–entails a sacrifice. It’s also about grappling with the  Even though Elliott begins the film thinking that she’s a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian, she quickly learns that sexual identity and sexuality aren’t nearly as fixed as some of us might like to believe. Sometimes we just have to let our preconceptions go and embrace the world in all of its strangeness and uncertainty. Sometimes we just have to learn how to let ourselves be happy without getting in our own way. 

In these dark and uncertain times, that’s a lesson we could all do well to learn.