Flipped

Flipped (2010) is about how two children see each other, and it shows every event twice. Juli falls for Bryce the day he moves onto her street. Bryce spends his time trying to get away from her. As the film goes on, the same event is given first in one account and then the other. A single moment becomes two different stories, and most of the time both of them remember it wrong. Over the years the views swap: Juli works out that the boy is not much, and Bryce works out too late what the girl is. A sycamore tree sits at the centre. Juli likes climbing it and looking down, and the felling of that tree is the best section in the film. It is adapted from Wendelin Van Draanen's novel. The book is set in the nineties; Rob Reiner moved it back to his own childhood at the end of the fifties. Reiner had made Stand by Me, and the way childhood is looked at here comes from there. It played in very few cinemas and vanished commercially; it found its audience later. The double narration makes some scenes feel repetitive. It runs 90 minutes. Good for: early adolescence stories, quiet films, and period texture. Less good for: there is little conflict, the pace is soft, and the ending is too neat.