Sundance review: 'Cusp' follows three Texas teens through a summer of heartbreak, pain and sisterhood

‘Cusp’

★★★1/2

Appearing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Running time: 83 minutes.

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The painfully observant documentary “Cusp” is every parent’s nightmare: A no-punches-pulled look at three teen-age girls during a lazy summer in a rural Texas town, left to their own devices and dealing with their own problems.

The film follows three teens: Brittney, Autumn and Aaloni, who each have their particular problems. Autumn has just broken up with a boy, Dustin, to whom she reluctantly gave up her virginity. Brittney, 15, has had too many boys — technically adults — come on to her, but her red flags fly out the window when she starts going out with an older boy. And Aaloni is dealing with her dad, a military man who thinks he’s the king of his castle and everyone else should be subservient to him.

In a carefree verité style, directors and cinematographers Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt don’t ask intrusive questions and they don’t overtly take sides. They follow these three girls to days at the beach and nights by the bonfire, in a summer where a tank top and jean shorts are the standard uniform and beer and pot the most accessible ways to pass the time and deaden the pain of childhood sexual assault, parental inattentiveness, obnoxious boys and their dead-end town.

I won’t divulge many plot details, mostly because it’s too complex and elusive to call the events shaped by Hill’s editing a plot in the traditional sense. “Cusp” is really a hangout movie, where you observe along with the filmmakers the ways these girls rely on each other because there’s nothing and no one else they can count on.