‘Sparks’ Review: Elsie Fisher in Revelatory Queer Teen Indie

In the hot, dry climate of Northwest Nevada, a mother drops off her daughter in town, urging her not to come home anytime soon. Cleo (Elsie Fisher) looks away as her mom gives her an unearned dressing-down, cruelly reminding her that she is not above her surroundings. She waits until her mother has already driven away before she responds with futile adolescent anger.

Cleo is effectively on her own for the rest of the film, with her mother never once appearing. Even when Cleo goes missing later in the film, the audience is never formally introduced to her mother. Instead, first-time director Fergus Campbell drops us directly into Cleo’s world — no parents, no rules and every authority figure is obscured, like the unintelligible adults in Peanuts cartoons. From the film’s hand-painted opening title sequence to the occasional intrusion of illustrations throughout the story, Sparks is the kind of microbudget indie that film festivals were made to showcase. Every frame is crafted with care and love for the cinematic form.

When a book on Jean-Luc Godard pops out of a cigarette machine, Cleo knows where she wants to go. She immediately disappears into the fantasy of 1960s Paris, a place she sees as the birth of a truer form of cinema, outside of American conventions. Luckily for her, she’s soon introduced to “The Crop,” a group of rebellious teenagers who believe the local reservoir is a time portal. The group’s de facto leader, Antoine (Charlie Foster), is just as enamored of Paris in the 1960s, despite knowing nothing of the French New Wave. Once he meets Cleo, he’s instantly obsessed with her, driving a wedge between him and his best friend and secret lover, Max (Denny Mcauliffe).

The rest of the group is much more chill, fascinated by the idea of time travel but content where they are. The original “Crop” includes the emotional Antoine, brutally honest Max, goofy Trip (Simon Downes Toney), laid back Kane (Thomas Deen Baker) and soft-spoken Casazza (Julia D’Angelo). Then there’s Odette (Madison Hu), who is secretly in love with Cleo, but mostly keeps it to herself. It’s Odette who introduces Cleo to “The Crop” and sets the story into motion.

With its queer love triangle and multiple scenes of “Crop” boys hooking up with each other, Sparks feels like a modern successor to the early films of Gregg Araki. Nowhere and Totally F***ed Up easily come to mind as we watch the kids party in the empty parking lot they call home, supplied with beer acquired with fake IDs. Similar to more recent indies like Kate Beecroft’s East of Wall and Luke Gilford’s National Anthem, Sparks blends classical rural imagery with a more ethnically and socially diverse worldview. Watching these films has been exciting, as they breathe new life into American independent cinema.

Campbell’s script has both stylized and naturalistic dialogue, giving us a group of teens who feel painfully real in their inconsistency. When Cleo goes missing, it’s unclear whether she actually time-traveled or is simply having a mental health crisis. It could go either way.

Foster gives a star-making performance as Antoine, an idealistic faux beatnik who can’t seem to accept that the object of his affection is just as clueless as he is. Fisher, who broke out in Bo Burnham’s directorial debut Eighth Grade, is the heart of Sparks, once again playing a girl who is struggling more than she lets on. Like many young women, she puts on a brave face, hoping her confidence will take her wherever she needs to go.

At a slim 76 minutes, Sparks pulls you in tight and never lets go, every frame bursting with teen angst and longing. It’s the kind of film that inspires young people to tell small, meaningful stories outside of the Hollywood machine. This critic hopes Sparks is seen by every teenager who needs it. Fergus Campbell has made something very special; I can’t wait to see what he does next.