Cecilia Aldarondo’s deeply personal documentary premiered earlier this year at SXSW and asked the question, “what if you could go back to high school and rewrite the whole experience?” Aldorando retraces the steps of her adolescence; is the gimmick as heartfelt as it aims to be?

The Gist: Documentarian Cecilia Aldorando has held many deep adolescent pains within her as she’s transitioned to adulthood — comments about her weight, being an outcast that endured bullying, and her own regretful decisions about friendships that aren’t able to be remedied in time. As a way of processing the guilt and trauma, and ultimately working towards acceptance, You Were My First Boyfriend rexamines each of the moments that have stuck with her by reenacting them and reclaiming them as her own.

What Will It Remind You Of?: The film’s therapeutic lens may remind you of Jonah Hill’s own therapy documentary Stutz.

Performance Worth Watching: While Cecilia is open and vulnerable throughout, her sister Laura is a soothing presence on screen — both for the audience and for Cecilia. She’s caring and understanding and opens herself up to her sister’s perspective on their childhood without diminishing her experience.

Memorable Dialogue: “I think of these recreations as an emotional exorcism,” the filmmaker tells two of the kids hired to play her high school bullies during the reenactment of her high school crush’s girlfriend forcing her to dance with him as a way of humiliating her. “I am truly haunted by these things that happened to me when I was your age and one of the things I can’t get past is why they still bother me.”

“This is a pretty elaborate form of psychotherapy,” one of the kids replies, which is really the crux of the film — Aldorando’s painstaking recreations are a grasp at public therapy and a way for her to hopefully work through the demons she still carries with her once and for all.

Sex and Skin: This isn’t that type of film.

Our Take: Some people look back at high school fondly, while others firmly don’t. Adolescence is a complicated time for many and filmmaker Aldorando is so deeply in the latter camp, her high school experiences still haunt her to this day.

Part of her fixation is on things that didn’t seem to go her way. Her weight was always commented on and even dissected by family and friends, and her crush whom she claimed to love in her diary barely even knew she existed. It’s all par for the course high school trauma, but Aldorando’s decision to revisit and interrogate those experiences head-on makes for a revelatory documentary.

That doesn’t mean that the film is easy to sit through. It’s cringe-worthy in many parts and occasionally feels like a self-important exercise (especially when replaying moments that don’t seem to illuminate other perspectives, like when she makes out with a younger boy to set the stage for a growing rift between her and one of her best friends Caroline). But mostly, You Were My First Boyfriend indulges the premise in an insightful way that seems to uproot long-held emotions and make breakthroughs about her own decisions instead of solely viewing herself as a victim.

This version of self-understanding is also afforded to others in her life: to this day, her sister admits to feeling self-conscious about her body, which is a testament to how much women hold onto comments about our bodies even later in life. Aldorando gives significant time to posthumously honor her former friend Caroline, whom she actively distanced herself from years ago.

A few times, the idea of this therapy-out-loud bubbles up and it’s truly the crux of the film: for Aldorando, You Were My First Boyfriend is catharsis after many years of tortured memories. For the audiences, it’s a neat film experiment that knows just when to pull itself back from the edge of self-indulgence.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The documentary is a fascinating, therapeutic meditation on memory and experience.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, Vulture and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.