Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (2012) poster
2012 · drama · comedy · coming-of-age

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Directed by Roberto Faenza1h 39m2012
ElsewhereIMDb5.73kRT9%Metacritic20
  • measured
  • gentle
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Neutral, measured, gentle drama / comedy, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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Precocious yet sensitive teenager James has a deep perception of the world but no idea how to live in it. Finding no help from his divorced parents nor his older memoir-writing sister, he decides to reject the beliefs adults try to push on him, starting with the college career that is looming over his last summer in New York, and embarks instead on a search for wisdom through nontraditional means...

Our read · Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (2012) reads as a neutral, measured, grounded drama · comedy · coming-of-age entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a dry, introspective teen rejecting the path laid out for him.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 18attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightYou want energetic teen stories or clear life lessons.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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