Twilight (2008)

In which the blogger returns to the place of his raising to peruse French stationary, Scottish baked goods and thrift store DVDs, of which five were purchased: The Wizard of Oz (1939), American Graffiti (1973), Ocean's Eleven (2001), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Twilight (2008). Last night I watched Twilight. 

Twilight is another of the many teen films since Rebel Without a Cause (1955) where the protagonist arrives at a new school and is immediately defined through difference. But whereas the students at Jim Stark's Dawson High (Rebel Without a Cause) are divided between "good" kids (conforming) and "bad" kids (delinquent), the kids at Forks High (Twilight) are all "good" and are altogether supportive of each other, with a kind of shimmering weirdness taking the place of those we once called "bad".

Protagonist Bella Swan is immediately drawn to the shimmering Cullen kids, particularly her fellow junior Edward, whom every girl desires but of whom Edward apparently wants no part. Sure enough, when Bella is assigned a seat in her biology class, it is next to Edward (see picture). Nothing is said between them, apart from their movements (flaring nostrils, furrowed brows, parting lips and high-speed seat re-positionings), a dance that looked to this old man like agitated attraction -- but to those for whom this film was designed, a dance they know so well.