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The Novice is like Whiplash (2014) if the pitiless instructor played by J.K. Simmons was a relentless inner monologue instead of a person. Lauren Hadaway’s semi-autobiographical feature debut is about a college freshman, Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman), who joins her school’s rowing team. Whereas most of the other girls at the initial meet-up seem receptive to wherever the sport takes them, Alex is neither so open nor wants to connect much with her new teammates. What we’ll soon gather is that she isn’t the type to approach life with a healthy amount of “I’ll see what happens!” flexibility. Competitiveness is her defining trait. A friend from high school she sits with at lunch one afternoon confesses to being nervous for Alex their senior year: everyone could tell she was wearing herself into an academic ground trying to get valedictorian. And in other scenes, where Alex is taking exams in big lecture halls, she’s always the last one to leave by hours, teased by one TA (Dilone) that it might not be so necessary to treat her work to quadruple- and quintuple-checks. She might not be the smartest student in her major, but she certainly holds the figurative gold medal for the hardest working. 

The moment Alex first catches sight of those rowing machines, soon to become her favored perch, we can practically see her mind start getting bogged down by what will become her newest obsession. She’s not merely going to master this sport she’s never tried before: she’s going to be the very best, too seduced by the image of herself commandeering a varsity boat as a freshman to not give in. She never considers that her individualism might not be well-suited to a sport as collaborative as rowing, or that endeavoring to get on varsity but at a pace that doesn’t require, essentially, grinding yourself down until you’re practically a twitching pile of bloody pulp isn’t a bad thing. “I’m so tired of everyone in my life telling me to relax!” Alex exclaims late in the film. You wish she’d listen. 

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