Emerson is 13 and lives with his parents in their eco-home in the wilds of Nova Scotia. He’s just had his first wet dream and completed writing and illustrating his first book. All 1000 pages of it.
Meanwhile, the home-schooled boy can barely add 2+2, so his mother enrolls him in the local junior high. There, Emerson’s 42-year-old English teacher Don has settled into a life of perpetual adolescence, paying regular visits to a park restroom for anonymous sex.
In the classroom, Emerson stirs things up. Surprisingly, Don sees a bit of himself reflected in him. Emerson, initially scornful of his teacher, soon develops his first crush on Don. The precociously confident boy, raised in a household of casual nudity and sexual openness, throws himself into this awakening of his heart with dangerous abandon. This is going to be a Whole New Thing. For everyone.
Not your average teen movie. The entire drama unfolds with the sense that these are real people living real lives, not facile movie fictions. The cast is uniformly excellent, but (Aaron) Webber in his first feature role is a stand out, delivering a subtle performance that offers a fully realized portrayal of a smart, sensitive, confused, and sometimes bratty and obnoxious youth. — Pam Grady
I couldn’t find a trailer that wasn’t in potato quality so have an excerpt from the film instead.. I just remembered by the way that when I made a post about this film on the old milkboys 11 years ago (damn…), I used a trailer that my boyfriend made himself because there was just no usable trailer out there 