The 15 Best Movies About Teenage Ennui

Created by Igor_Brynner.

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While each stage in our growth and development as human beings has its fair share of conflict and hardship, none is as tempestuous and complicated as adolescence. It is the time of loss of innocence, when we have to leave the cradle in which we so happily romped to take a look at a world that most of the time is cruel and indifferent.

It is a time of great transformation and discovery; our bodies change in such amazing ways and so fast that we feel dazzled and mesmerized. Our intellect develops more than ever before, our emotions grow deeper, and our cravings become more complex.

It is in adolescence that we define ourselves by our own terms, and when we try to know who we are. We discover sex, love, passion, and our lives are filled with great intensity and energy. But we also come across pain, fear, confusion, and many other negative feelings that make us feel distraught and tired.

The death of innocence comes as particularly painful, for we realize that things are and always will be far from ideal; we realize that the world is ugly, love is unsatisfactory, and our search for answers is unfruitful. That’s why philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus are so popular around teenagers; they realized how absurd things are and created a philosophical system around that fact.

Such conflictive discoveries can lead those inclined toward melancholy to an utter dissatisfaction with the world, to an unexplainable sense of loss. ‘Ennui’ can be defined as a sort of existential boredom, one that isn’t necessarily a consequence of an eventless environment, but one that spawns from the belief that nothing good is ever going to happen. It’s an emotional tiredness that is often accompanied by depressive states.

Here I present a compilation of 15 films in which ennui during the teenage years is explored and portrayed in its wide array of manifestations.