"It happened. There's no avoiding it. No forgetting."

I’ve always wanted to express to other people how much I loved the movie Speak. I have watched Speak more than ten times and I have burst into tears every single time. Well here I go… Here is the basic information - Speak was originally a book published in 1999 by Laurie Halse and was then made into a movie in 2004.

Warning this may contain spoilers! :O

The movie starts off with thirteen year old Kristen Stewart who plays Melinda Sordino sitting in front of a mirror in her bedroom with a vacant expression. She’s applying eyeliner onto her lips to make them look as if they were stitched shut. Just from the first few seconds I already knew that this was going to be an emotional movie. 

 The movie is about Melinda Sordino appearing to look depressed in her first year of High School, with no friends but one, distancing from her parents and failing her grades. We discover in the course of the movie that during the summer before High School began she was raped by a boy in an older year called Andy Evans. The traumatic experience leaves her only to express herself through art and forms a moving relationship with her art teacher Mr Freeman. She paints and draws how hurt she really feels inside and seeks refuge in her art class. The distance between her and her parents escalates because her parents just do not understand her anymore and feel as if their daughter has become a different person … “All I know is that I had a sweet loving little girl and now she’s flushing her grades down the toilet”.

 She scurries up the courage to disclose to her ex-best friend but is considered a liar. This shatters Melinda’s world as she had not confided to anyone about that distressing experience and when she finally speaks up she was not believed. Eventually the school find out and her mother is called in to pick her up and as a result she finally speaks to her mother about what happened on that heartbreaking night. Christopher Libertino composes a beautiful piece of music to go alongside the movie, in actual fact the soundtrack does add a lot to the upsetting atmosphere. I applaud Kristen Stewart for her raw, honest and emotional performance. My heart literally ached every time that I watched it and even though I tried not to, the lump in my throat always became tears flooding down my cheeks. Melinda just seemed so tortured, you could feel the pain that she was going through… the isolation, the despair and the loneliness she suffered. My favourite scene was when Melinda shows Mr Freeman a collection of all her work from the beginning of the year in a small unused closet in the school. You can see the tears in his eyes proving that he really did make a difference to Melindas delicate year.

I am yet to read the book, but it is definitely in my to-do list for this summer! I without a doubt recommend anyone and everyone to watch this touching movie. So unless you have a heart of steel then I am guessing you probably will shed some tears during this movie, so be prepared! :’) 

Here's the link to Part 1 of the movie: