Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore

1997, 1080hd

One more for the 90s weekend, this time a low budget slacker/punk teen movie called Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore. Basically the story of high school student Jane (Lisa Gerstein), who has sex for the first time and hates it so much she vows to her friends that she will never do it again. Jane works in an arthouse cinema in the city with the slackest work conditions ever so when they're not talking to one another, they're partying in the cinemas. Everyone seems all grown up but Jane is an A-student suburban girl who seems to fit in just fine and wants to break out of her suburban hellhole and from her strangely absent parents. Along the way she discovers masturbation and then a friend gives her a sexual experience that she'll never forget. A tragedy will put a new perspective on that experience as well as the actions of her fellow workers at the cinema.

May be a stretch calling it a punk movie as the movie is fairly straightforward but it does have a mostly punk soundtrack and a decent cameo from Jello Biafra doing a 3 minute rant over the end credits. The movie is mostly conversations between various characters which vary in interest but it does get more interesting after the sexual experience with a friend that takes a turn into some life lessons after that friend dies in a drunk driving incident. I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more in the movie as nearly every time someone drives in this movie, they're drunk, so when someone actually dies this way, it doesn't feel like much of a surprise. The movie has that 90s indie feel about it but it feels closer to a far less funny Clerks (it's not really a comedy) than it does to other indie darlings from the period. All in all, I thought it was OK and best viewed as a relic of the time than anything more than that.

Lisa Gerstein film clip (collage below)