Fifteen Going on Thirty

In the 1950s, they didn’t talk much about domestic violence, infidelity or alcoholism. Fifteen-year-old Mathew Sweeney has no guidelines to help him navigate, as he is hurled into an internal journey of conflicting emotions. He is in love with Maria with whom he works at a summer job at the community swimming pool. She is a junior and more interested in Jason, a senior who tools about campus in a baby-blue 1957 Chevrolet.

His father, Danny, a sports writer with a byline in the town newspaper had been his early childhood hero. When his father’s drinking causes his workplace performance to suffer, he is fired They are forced to sell their home and move into an apartment. His mother, Clara, now supports the family working as a hostess at a local hotel. His parents are now in open warfare over his father’s infidelity, Matthew and his mother leave Danny and move in with her mother. Matthew believes things could not possibly get worse, but he is mistaken. The unthinkable happens.