The Cake Eaters

Kristen Stewart, of vampire girlfriend fame (Twilight), stars as Georgia, a chronically ill young woman suffering from a debilitating neural disorder, a stiflingly overprotective mother, and the small town blues. Like any normal teenager, Georgia yearns for freedom and yearns to experience life, and the joys that have evaded her, before it is too late. The Cake Eaters is the story of how she finds Beagle, a local boy, who is thawing emotionally after having spent years devotedly caring for his ailing mother, and how the two deal with with their blossoming sexuality and struggle to be accepted as adults by their families.

Sadly, unlike in Kristen Stewart starrer Twilight, the romance in The Cake Eaters is often hurried, making it lack the agonizingly built up tension of the former film, and instead feel half-baked. And since it is tough to identify with the characters and understand why they come to care for each other so quickly, the film feels rather like a metaphorical bundt cake with a collapsed emotional center. However the film is worth watching for Kristen Stewart’s transformative performance alone; she is surprising, nuanced and utterly convincing- slurring her speech and artfully managing to make the simple act of walking seem an unimaginably difficult feat.