My memories of 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, are fragments of images pulled from the television news broadcast. Back then, I was too young to recognize the significance of what was happening. For a generation, it wasn’t a surreal moment in time; it was incomprehensible. The event is mentioned briefly in director Katharina Rivilis’s first feature, I’ll Be Gone in June, but 9/11 is the dominant marker in this drama.
The story revolves around the arrival of 16-year-old German exchange student Franny (Naomi Cosma) in the sleepy desert town of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Set in 2001-2002, Franny’s experience of this part of America, with its suffocating heat, spans the months leading up to and after 9/11.
I’ll Be Gone in June provokes an errant thought about the proximity of the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the war on terror. For some inexplicable reason, it feels as if these historic events should be further apart in time. Like a shot across the bow, I’ll Be Gone in June reminds us how fast the world around us is moving. However, this is not an errant thought, because the passage of time is integral to Rivilis’s film, which fictionalizes the director’s memories of being an exchange student in Las Cruces.
The first images are incredibly striking. As the plane descends below the clouds, the desert landscape appears. Through Rivilis and her cinematographer Giulia Schelhas’s camera, it reminds us of the contours of a human body. Before we have time to decipher the meaning, Franny has touched down in Albuquerque, where she meets her host family, Tony and Eve Garcia (Kendal Rae and Abel Garcia).
I’ll Be Gone in June is a film of two halves, albeit not literally. Franny’s time with the Garcias is marred by her schoolteacher, Mr. Miller’s (John D. Napier) behavioral patterns of control and abandonment. Enabled by Tony, this affects not only Franny but also their daughter, Robin (Jazmine Olague), and foster child, Patty (Kendall Myers), whom they appear to have taken in for financial incentives. So, it’s hardly surprising when Franny is abruptly sent to stay with another family, a colleague of Eve’s.
The abandonment stings at first, but Franny is welcomed by the daughter, who is a similar age. Stuck with an older and younger brother, she’s possibly happy to have another girl around. Sunbathing in the Garcias’ dusty backyard with her friend and fellow German exchange student, Ida (Rebecca Schulz), and being asked to cover up because it made Tony uncomfortable, becomes a distant memory. Now, Franny reads alongside a luxury swimming pool with clear blue water, while the daughter sunbaths uninhibited in a two-piece bikini.
Franny also befriends Sam (Bianca Dumais), who has a reputation for sleeping around with guys. However, her past might be a more troubling one than the rumor mill suggests. Then, there’s Elliott (David Flores), the mysterious musical type who pulls Franny into his lonely and distracted orbit.
The film’s two halves are defined by a shift from control to the rediscovery of freedom, signaled by the previously missing books that appear among belongings left in plastic bags. In her new home, concerns might be expressed about her spending time with Elliott, but Franny is allowed to make her own choices.
The Burden of Time
I’ll Be Gone in June has an evocative, even a melancholic energy. On the one hand, it captures the free-flowing rhythm of youth that lacks the urgency of our adult years. While we may be tempted to see the future as beyond adolescents’ comprehension, for Franny, it sits on the horizon, growing larger as she nears the time to return home. Rivilis’ adolescent characters are not naive. They are aware of the burden of time, how limited and heartbreaking it can be. Together, they learn how short-lived the chapters in our lives are, and how quickly the carefree attitude towards time at the beginning is replaced by a yearning to not see things end.
In the film’s production notes, Rivilis speaks of being unable to put her experiences and memories into words, which the film fictionalizes. This is a useful lens through which to view I’ll Be Gone in June because this sense of what cannot be articulated is woven into the film’s spirit.
When it’s time for Franny to return home, how will she share her experience with her family and friends? She might be able to narrate her time in Las Cruces, but there will inevitably be part of the experience that is subliminal, which can only be felt or sensed. Rivilis does her utmost to create a similar predicament for the audience.
By the end of the story, we’ve experienced part of an adolescent’s coming of age. From forming friendships to having to leave them behind, there’s a sense that we cannot articulate a narrative beyond a handful of plot points. For example, when Franny is abruptly sent to live with another family, her tumultuous relationship with Elliott, or the conversations about 9/11 outside school and inside the classroom. Beyond that lies the film’s subliminal realm.
By veering away from a traditional narrative rhythm driven by dramatic arcs, Rivilis takes an observational or meditative approach. She homes in on those gaps that traditional narrative storytelling avoids. This makes sense given that I’ll Be Gone in June is inspired by personal memories, and Rivilis is using the film to reconnect with her past.
However, it also means it’s elusive and lends itself to avoidance more than engagement. While this will be unappealing to some, it has to be said that Rivilis excels at finding these gaps and spaces. This doesn’t equate to narrative neglect, because there’s enough of an arc to give the story its shape. Rivilis, however, finds a way to subvert narrative tradition, in which everything happens in quick succession, to honor how drawn-out life can be. The note of tension she strikes perfectly is how life moves so fast, and yet, so slow.
This rhythm complements the coming-of-age narrative. It’s a paradoxical period in our lives when we feel both confident and unsure, carefree and impatient, enjoying how time moves slowly yet desperate to grow up, and, especially when we reach a certain age, we crave mature experiences.
I’ll Be Gone in June is inherently about lost souls, or characters searching for identity, meaning, and purpose. While its cast is adolescent, it’s relatable to adults because we never stop grappling with these larger-than-life themes. Then, there’s the trauma of 9/11, which manifests as news reports as background noise on the television.
Throughout, news reports creep into the background where, in one scene, former U.S. president George W. Bush proudly tells Congress that the flag once again flies above the embassy in Kabul and terrorists who were once free now occupy cells in Guantánamo Bay. There’s no way that an event of this magnitude has not crept into the adolescent consciousness.
In a teacher-led class, the students dig into their feelings about what happened, the country’s response, and how it influences their perspective towards Islam. In another scene, Elliott tells Franny, “Since 9/11, it just seems like everything has been all fucked. We’re just floating off into the abyss as a country. I don’t know. Sometimes, I just feel a little bit hopeless.” What is the larger point Rivilis is making, because there doesn’t appear to be one, other than to present a contrast between adolescent innocence and political and cultural dysfunction?
I’ll Be Gone in June acknowledges 9/11 and its aftermath, but it serves the film’s agenda. Rivilis is careful not to let the story become driven by politics or to telegraph the film’s broader themes and ideas, because that would defeat the purpose of the experience. It’s about being present in the moment with Franny, allowing her experiences to prompt us to reflect on our own coming of age and the people we have become, versus who we once dreamt of being.
Rivilis’s reconnection with her past becomes a prism through which we can connect with our own. This stirs the film’s evocative and melancholic energy because Rivilis is not trying to tell a story as much as capture a specific feeling from a special period in one’s life that can only be recognised in hindsight.
The pleasure of the moment never appears to dawn on Franny, and while this chapter of her life is not without its challenges, she should enjoy these final moments of adolescent innocence, with all the pain, laughter, and joy they bring. Like so many of us, Franny fails to see the hidden pleasure that she’ll one day remember.
It cannot be a coincidence that Franny, in class reads aloud from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth and final novel Tender is the Night (1934), the passage: “Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy—one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.”
Rivilis is not trying to tell a story as much as capture a specific feeling from a special period in one’s life that can only be seen in hindsight. With humility, she defers to the tragic writer to help her shape I’ll Be Gone in June’s innermost thoughts.