Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain

Plot Summary

In MAKE ME YOUNG: YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN, an age-obsessed daughter of a plastic surgeon (filmmaker Mitch McCabe) takes a journey through America's $60 billion a year anti-aging world. In this Alice-in-Wonderland tale, McCabe spends two years traveling across America visiting doctors, experts and lives with a cross-section of characters from Minnesota to Texas who've gone to varying lengths to "beat the clock." Interwoven with these stories are the filmmaker's own self inquiry and memories of growing up around her father -- a Vietnam War trauma surgeon turned small town plastic surgeon. As the film chronicles the rise of the Anti-Aging industry through regular Americans, it hints at a nostalgia for a more innocent time when plastic surgery was used primarily for reconstruction in a pre-Botox era, to paint a funny, but troubling portrait of a country that desperately needs to stay forever young. Along the way, one wonders if the filmmaker herself hasn't been pulled in by the seduction of youth.