Introduction
“Undergrads” is a swift coming-of-age drama by Sigrid Polon which chronicles the lives of two female Athletes, Athena and Rica, during the the emotional and hectic days at university. The Polon has managed to capture the delicate psychological shifts that females undergo while in the campus.”Undergrads” is a conceptual film which thoughtfully and intelligently tones down the spectacular so that the emotions and personal stories remain at the forefront. These moments bring a lot of power to the narrative, allowing the audience to gain a comprehensive self perspective by allowing introspection.
Plot Overview
The start of the film demonstrates the bond that the two females share during freshman year of university; One filled with companionship, love and encouragement. Spending so many years in the same highschool allows one to form relationships with those who provide the utmost emotional support. However, the film does demonstrate that relationships do undergo a shift, but the reasoning behind it is widely unknown.
Athena is thoughtful and self-assured, often occupying the social role of the listener. Rica, conversely, is more animated, talkative, and vulnerable. Both women start to feel a change in their interpersonal dynamics as they try to juggle the rigors of college and the challenges of learning new skills while nurturing new relationships and self-exploration.
The film does not try to elicit a change. It lingers and creates room for contemplation. Several moments of silence, prolonged gazes, and subtle walks in tandem with study sessions filled with an emotional current that is far more complex than their surface simplicity indicate. These small moments of life allow Athena and Rica to slowly access and articulate parts of themselves that have remained untouched and unsaid for far too long.
The new emotional territory they have entered with one another comes with the decision of what to do next. Continue to protect the known, or shift to allow for the new, and as yet undefined, possibly more truthful.
Main Characters
Athena: Still calm and reserved, Athena constitutes the emotional anchor of the film. Her silence is not the absence of words. Rather, she listens more than she talks. Her emotional courage is the character arc she undergoes, whereby she learns how to recognize her feelings and, more importantly, learn to give a voice to them.
Rica: She radiates with warmth and positivity, and her dynamic persona adds vibrancy to the story. Rica temperes her buoyancy with a siheyas an emotional range. Athena’s connection with her pushes Rica to reflect more and entertain the idea of change, however small.
This is the essence of the movie. They learn to ‘speak the same language and share the same vision’ with a deeper greater mutual understanding of silence, patience, and listening to one another more than just respect.
THUMES AN IDEAS
- Self-Discovery with a Friend
Athena and Rica’s story illustrated beautifully friendships revealing tokens of one’s individuality. They didn’t learn to discover themselves in a vacuum, rather, they found themselves through the other’s perception of themselves.
- Transition of Change
The film is set in a university which is a stage set for alteration for learning and non learning in a student’s life as well as an internal shift. This film tries to capture the subtle realizations which go by unnoticeable during this change period.
- Courage of Emotional Honest
The film as well as the stories highlight and reflect on the courage it takes to be emotionally vulnerable with others and with oneself. Athena and Rica, along with the other characters go through some doubts, hopes and clarity which slowly, but certainly, sets them on a path to the future.
- Quiet Moments as Turning Points
The film does not employ dramatic outbursts; instead it relies on quiet moments such as a lingering glance, a muted laugh, and a pause to extract emotional outpour. For people who appreciate storytelling that is nuanced, it is the realness and relatability of such moments that is most striking of all.
Cinematic Style
The film employs a visual style that is soft and natural. Warming lighting and realistic, even prosaic, environments such as classrooms, libraries, and, indeed, even somnolent dorms evoke a sense of palpable reality. The spectacle of cinema is avoided and instead there is great attention to the faces, postures, and the emotive distances the characters sustain to one another.
Apart from the picture, there is also sound design. The film is not burdened with a loud or even a dramatic score, instead, there is the discretely sweet sound of ambience: footsteps echoing at a distance, the page turning, and birds chirping somewhere, for example, outside a window.
The film is slow and reflective. Restlessness, the feeling characterized as most urgent, is absent. The film does not brag of hasty resolutions or surprises. Instead, it is an exposition on feelings unveiling, a retrospective contemplation on emotional states whose presence is apparent, although elements of them have not been entirely recognized.
Audience Reception
Undergrads has won considerable acclaim for the honesty with which it tells a story, particularly one that has been crafted with such care, and is emotionally true. The principal performances have also been noted with particular attention given to the feeling of chemistry that exists and indeed is palpable between Athena and Rica.
Relatively, the portrayal-of the movie in the eyes of the students and other young adults was extremely engaging for them personally. The dramatic raised-octaves, inner shifts, and concealed emotions of the self reflect on the reality of growing up as opposed to being shown as a fraudulent self. The movie offers greater attention and care towards its characters instead of providing a juvenile eccentric chaos of dramatism.
Many Educators and the film critics have also pointed out how the movie focuses on the promotional discourse about the need for young Octavians to engage in self-exploration in a safe and emotionally supportive setting.
Conclusion
As the movie is dedicated to the topic of growing up, its focus is on the foundation of love to talk about the friendship and the relationship of the characters. They had to exhibit some confusion and the self-denial in order to gather some courage and compliment the subtlety of the silent Rhythms. The movie beautifully expresses how the relationship of Athena and Rica has the capacity to strengthen the audience in tone of their personality so the flow of their emotions is quite open.
To sum this deeply thoughtful narrative, the movie leave us with the notion of suspense and the self-realization aura which so many people are lost in. It’s impression is more towards the people who are lost in the wondering world trying to find the lost pulses of their inner self.
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