My Year of Dicks is a 2022 short film (24 minutes) directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir.
It is based on Pamela Ribon's memoir Notes to Boys (And Other Things I Shouldn't Share in Public). The story finds Pamela in Houston, Texas in 1991. Pamela, a 15-year-old girl, is determined to lose her virginity. Over the course of a year, the story unrolls in five chapters. Pamela encounters various dick-owning teenagers—a skateboarder, a theater usher, a sensitive boy, and a boy who describes himself as a straight edge—and has multiple close encounters with sex. And all the while, there's the presence of her best friend, a boy named Sam.
Tropes:
- All Women Are Prudes: Discussed; Pamela's father tells her that women don't enjoy penetration so there's really no need for her to actually have sex.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Sam gets naked to tell Pam that the boys she's been chasing aren't good enough for her. She starts putting clothes on him, then they get all giggly and she puts more clothes on him, and it's only when he is invisible under a pile of clothes that he has the nerve to say "I love you."
- Art Shift: Different chapters are done in different animation styles. Chapter 3, "The Sweet One", has a lot of anime-style animation. Chapter 4, "The Horror Show", has scenes drawn like a horror cartoon.
- Bland-Name Product: Houston has a fast food chain called "Taco Head".
- Creepy Crows: A chapter titled "The Horror Show" and featuring a lot of horror-style animation has the sound of crows cawing outside in the first scene.
- Deranged Animation: The animation is wildly unpredictable throughout, like when Pam's first potential boyfriend "the vampire" sprouts fangs, or when a wolf leaps out of Clinton's mouth to represent his jealousy.
- Dramatic Irony: Pamela reaches for Robert's crotch a couple of times, only for him to move her hand away. Her Inner Monologue says "I love how you let me control the pace, the urgency." This is immediately followed by Robert, who turns out to be gay, putting his hand on Sam's knee.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Watching Henry & June gets Pamela trying out her high school French and imagining a French boyfriend murmuring to her romantically.
- Flipping the Bird:
- Pam's ex-boyfriend Clinton flips her the bird at a party.
- Pam's unfortunate encounter with the theater usher (he tries to pressure her into a BJ and then into sex in a dirty storage closet) ends with her flipping him off as she leaves.
- Gilligan Cut: Pamela's friend calls, trying to get her to go to a Wild Teen Party. A reluctant Pam says "I am not—" and the scene cuts to her sneaking out a window to go to the party.
- Incompatible Orientation: The third chapter has Pamela going to a fair with Sam and "The Sweet One", a boy named Robert. She kisses him on a Ferris wheel—and Robert puts his hand on Sam's knee. Cut to Pamela crying after Robert has given her the "better as friends" talk.
- Match Cut: After Robert puts his hand on Sam's knee, Sam directs Robert's hand back to Pamela. Cut to Sam patting Pamela's shoulder as she cries about finding out Robert isn't interested.
- Medium Blending: Each chapters is introduced with a live-action video clip of the real Pam Ribon from 1991.
- Nudity Equals Honesty: Sam chooses to take all his clothes off before telling Pam how he cares about her and all the boys she's been hanging out with aren't good enough for her.
- Precision F-Strike: Pamela finds out that her first potential boyfriend, David, won a bet for the oddly specific sum of $2.58 by making out with her. She throws $5.16 at him and says "I'm worth double, bitch."
- Sex as Rite-of-Passage: A less common female version of this trope, as a horny teenaged girl decides she doesn't want to be a virgin anymore and looks for a suitable boy to deflower her.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: The film cuts to the end credits as Pam crawls under a pile of clothes with Sam and, apparently, finally loses her virginity.
- Shout-Out:
- Pamela gets turned on watching one of the first NC-17 movies ever made, the Erotic Film Henry & June.
- She also gets turned on when she goes to the movies and watches The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Pam's little sister is only shown in one scene, and has only one line."Shit, that was some easy fuckin' money."
- Swing Low, Sweet Harriet: Pamela briefly imagines herself in a Victorian frilly dress, swinging on a swing, as she attracts the jealousy of her ex-boyfriend Clinton.
- The Talk: A deeply horrifying one in which Pam's father says that women don't enjoy sex, that a penis really doesn't care how it gets off, and that Pam should stick to oral sex for now. Pam's body morphs and distorts in a Deranged Animation kind of way to symbolize her extreme embarrassment and discomfort.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Pam in the car with her mom, after her father gives her a deeply awkward and embarrassing sex talk.
- Visual Innuendo: It's a pretty good sign that Pamela is going to finally lose her virginity when the fifth and last chapter is introduced with animation of bees and hummingbirds probing flowers.
- Wild Teen Party:
- Pam's first potential boyfriend takes advantage of her admission that her parents are out of town by bringing a bunch of other teenagers over to her house for a party.
- Pam goes to a second, wilder teen party later, and is startled to see some boys snorting cocaine off of a coffee table.
