You Were My First Boyfriend - Review

The main theme is the experience of parasocial relationships as a teenager. Think of falling in love with a fictional character from a book or series, but also being in love with a popular classmate who does not know about your existence. These imagined relationships often cause the person in love to long to live the life of popular peers. This often also involves rejecting their old life and doing everything they can to belong to the new group.

Creator Aldarondo expounds on this by exploring her own parasocial relationships with young actors playing popular classmates, and how her previous friendships fell apart because of her crush. Because as much as she wanted to belong to that group, it mainly gave her an inferiority complex. The scenes in which she returns to these memories with the help of the actors hit her hard.

She bursts into tears several times in the middle of the set, which makes the ethics of her coping process - especially in relation to the teenagers - somewhat questionable. It remains wrong to place her trauma processing on the teenagers. This leaves a bad aftertaste that is never completely washed away, no matter how warm the rest of the documentary feels. There are also moments where she processes her traumas together with other adults. This makes it constantly feel like a gimmick to use the teenagers as surrogate psychiatrists for her own purposes.

Yet the documentary contains a familiar high school experience for many (former) misfits. It also remains unclear for which group of people exactly the documentary was made: should current misfits find peace in this, or is it a refuge for former misfits to study their own growth from the outside?

The extremely personal telling (and portrayal) of memories certainly has points of recognition, but is absolutely not a story that represents everyone. This is most evident in the scenes where she recreates film series or music videos. These quickly feel long-winded and like a joke that the viewer is unaware of. Even if it produces very emotional moments for the maker, more of this could have been left in the editing room.

This raises the question several times how relevant the film is. It also never quite feels like the first part of the documentary is necessarily necessary. It soon becomes clear that focusing on the life she actually wants to lead is a distraction tactic. Because although a school time full of bullies is traumatizing, it remains a bit sparse for a full-length documentary. Then it is more interesting when she examines her own relationship with others in the same position.

Throughout the documentary there is a common thread about her red-haired childhood friend Caroline. It soon becomes clear that Aldarondo feels as if she can never become popular if she continues to hang out with her ginger girl next door. They slowly grow apart, until there is terrible news about Caroline. As this storyline becomes more and more prevalent, the beginning of the film feels redundant in retrospect.

Every now and then Aldarondo presents interesting insights about the importance of friendships where the opinions of outsiders do not matter. How these intense and almost familial friendships are often experienced afterwards as one emotional mess, instead of separate memories. It is these introspective moments that give warmth to the documentary and put the human focus. For anyone who has ever felt like the ugly duckling of the family or friend group, You Were My First Boyfriend will provide more than enough recognition. It just takes some effort to wash through all the personal memories.