Backspot – BFI Flare 2024

Writers: Joanne Saraze and D.W. Waterson

Director: D.W. Waterson

A drama about a competitive cheerleading squad, Joanne Saraze and D.W. Waterson’s film screening at BFI Flare 2024 has no pom poms and short skirts, but instead focuses on the ebbing relationship between second team athletes Riley and Amanda when they both win the chance to perform with the Thunderhawks, the best of the best, if their coach is to be believed. Examining the corrosive nature of ambition, personal anxiety and the determination to make it in elite sport, Backspot is a beautifully drawn study of teenage desire in all its forms.

Riley and Amanda are selected for their top cheerleading squad but the practice hours along with Riley’s intense determination to be the best puts pressure on their once close relationship. As the couple drift apart, Riley’s admiration for obsessive and driven coach Eileen grows, especially when the assistant coach tells her that she is one of Eileen’s favourites. With a big championship pending, can any of the girls from the second team stay the course?

Backspot refers to Riley’s position n the squad, a role that controls the lifts and tricks by managing the rhythm and direction of the rest of team in formation. The pressure to perform, and crucially, not to drop a colleague creates an interesting anxiety strand to Saraze and Waterson’s film which manifests in Riley closing down with those closest to her but also in acts of subtle but prolonged self-harm, tearing hairs from her own eyebrows which she does unconsciously through the movie. There are Darren Aronofsky influences here in the use of close-up and submerged sound to imply panic attacks, but Waterstone’s film is a more subtle study of pain and coping mechanism than the showier Back Swan.

There is credibility in all the central relationships with strong collegiate friendships built in the early minutes of Backspot that are then put under strain during the course of the movie. And sexuality is just accepted fact here, no one frets about it, it is not the substance of the story while family and friends are supportive – nice to see in a movie about teenage self-formation. But it gives depth to the romance between Riley and Amanda because it is a fixed point that the story can move away from and back to.

There is a strong central performance Devery Jacobs as Riley whose depressive mother and absent father underpin a semi-permanent fear and self-confidence that contest throughout, and Jacobs is particularly adept at humanising all of her character’s conflicting thoughts that shape behaviour despite being sure of herself and her talent. Kudakwashe Rutendo as Amanda is a well-drawn love interest whose more limited circumstances mean she has to balance working in the local cinema with training and her relationship, finding plenty of hurt as Riley prioritises success.

Some of Backspot’s subplots are a little weak including Riley’s mother’s OCD and need to clean while coach Eileen (Evan Rachel Wood) is cold and harsh without fully explaining her own broken relationship and investment in the squad. But Saraze and Waterson have created an enjoyable and embracing 90-minute movie that keeps you rooting for its central character, hoping she can get what she wants in all areas of her life.

Backspot is screening at BFI Flare 2024 from 13-24 March.