By Gabrielle Bruney, Image: Showtime Documentary Films, Jezebel, December 3, 2021
“I never wanted to lose my virginity, but it just happened,” says one of the teenaged subjects of the new documentary Cusp. “The whole time I was like, ‘Fuck, what am I doing? Okay, we’re going to say, ‘No.’ One, two, three—.’” She cuts herself off, making a noise that sounds as though a word has made its way out of her throat only to be caught against closed lips. “I just couldn’t say no,” she concludes. “I don’t really know why. I just was so scared to say no.”
The film, which is now streaming on Showtime, offers a verité-styleexamination of one summer in the lives of Aaloni, Brittney, and Autumn, 15- and 16-year-old friends growing up in an unnamedTexas town. It’s at once a languorous and harrowing portrait of teenage life, with trips to beaches and lakes, backyard parties, fast food runs, and tallboys against a backdrop of lushly-filmed sunsets. The three girls at the center of the documentary contend with familial struggles, navigating relationships with parents whose own lives have been shaped by substance use and PTSD. Then there are the boys they mix with—young men on the other side of 18, some of whom carry and deploy firearms with casual ease.
In conversations with the filmmakers, Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, the girls return again and again to the topic of sexual assault, sharing accounts of violence endured in earlier childhood, and efforts to negotiate the sexual power imbalances between themselves and the young men they date. One rape within their friend group is discussed with near nonchalance. “That’s funny, because whenever he came over to our house that one time and spent the night, he tried doing shit with me,” says Aaloni of the accused rapist. “But then when I told him my age, he was like, ‘Oh wait, age doesn’t matter, it’s just a number.’”
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