Northern Lights

Nicholas Connor’s ‘Northern Lights’ tells the story of Emma, a girl that approaches adulthood, but life isn’t as easy as she thinks it is. Even though she tries to live her live based on her late mother’s expectations, anxiety comes over her and makes it very hard for her to enjoy her last youthful years.

For such a young film director, Nicholas Connor does a good job. ‘Northern Lights’ raises up some issues that are quite hard to handle, but in the end we can see that they have turned up just fine. It is not that often for us to encounter a featurette done by a filmmaker so young, and also, the result to be this good.

First off, the dialogue in ‘Northern Lights’ is surprisingly great for a film set around these kinds of teenage archetypes. It is much more intelligently sophisticated than the typical pandering you hear coming out of the mouths of teenagers. It adds a whole new level of respect to the film that keeps it very lively and fresh. But the dialogue isn’t cocky, thankfully, and we never got the sense the writer was trying to boost his wide vocabulary. He went a totally different route, and used it to the advantage of more characterization.

The film also shows the tremendous versatility and courage of filmmaker Nicholas Connor. The score is good and adequate for this kind of movie, the cinematography is neat, acting is quite good, nothing out of the classical format we’ve been used to seeing in this kind of projects.