New DIY Documentary Honors AIDS Media Activism, Love, Loss, and Queer Community

Last March, I met filmmaker and scholar Alexandra Juhasz outside the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. She was in the middle of a Film/Video Studio Residency at the Wex, as it’s known as here in Columbus, working closely with an editor on post-production of her experimental documentary Please Hold.

Please Hold, which premiered earlier this March, explores the intersections of activism, memory, and media via a profoundly personal yet communal lens. It is anchored by videos of two of Juhasz’s closest collaborators and late friends in the last stages of their lives. Shot on a mix of consumer-grade recording devices — iPhone, Zoom, VHS camcorder, and Super-8 film — the documentary is an homage to grassroots AIDS mediamaking across decades and its ability to capture intimate, honest communication about hope and loss.

I was profoundly moved that Juhasz invited me into the studio with her to watch a cut of the film. A prolific writer and filmmaker, Juhasz is a Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She produced and acted in the renowned feature documentaries The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996, and its remaster, 2016) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). For decades, Juhasz has written, directed, and produced her own documentary features and shorts, which have screened widely in feminist, queer, and experimental documentary festivals. She has written extensively on HIV/AIDS, including the recent publications We Are Having this Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production with Ted Kerr and AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, edited with Jih-Fei Cheng and Nishant Shahani.

I first encountered Juhasz’s writing in grad school while studying LGBTQ media, history, and activism. Her book AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video, deeply shaped the way I theorized about LGBTQ local television in my own work. While preparing to begin my dissertation, I emailed Juhasz for advice about how best to write about these topics. I was looking for possibility-models, other scholar-activists who do research in the service of social justice and queer community. Since then, Juhasz has supported my work in many ways, including connecting me with media makers I interviewed for my dissertation.

As we watched the documentary together in the studio at the Wex, I realized that Please Hold honors one of these same media makers: Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, a Black disabled queer feminist media activist who died in 2022. I spoke with Szczepanski years earlier about her work creating AIDS education media for the Audio-Visual Department of the Gay Men Health Crisis in the 1990s, after Juhasz connected us. I hadn’t realized the film would document Szczepanski’s last days. Watching the film next to Juhasz and her editor, I realized we were both holding Szczepanski’s memory, and our connections to her, in different ways. To know Alex Juhasz is to be held in community, a privilege and an honor that connects you to her own deeply felt responsibility to making the world a more livable place for marginalized people.

It was a pleasure to speak with Juhasz more about the film’s production, how it explores grief and loss, her approach to activist media making and distribution, and the importance of LGBTQ communities of care. Our conversation below has been lightly edited and condensed. Please Hold is available to watch for free on the film’s website and you can book a screening of it here.

Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski in “WAVE: Self-Portraits” (The Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, 1990, VHS).

Lauren: Could tell me about the origins of this project and what inspired you to create it?

Alex: Thank you for asking. This video began because, during the COVID pandemic, my very good friend and a collaborator of mine on AIDS activist media, Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, asked me to shoot video tape of her in the process of dying. She more or less chose the terms of her own death because she stopped receiving dialysis.

I came to videotape her twice in rehab centers in New York. And after that, I made a video that she had wanted from those materials called I Want to Leave a Legacy. When I was making that video, I realized that at a previous moment in my life, another very close person to me had asked me to make a video with him in the late stages of his life. That was my best friend, James Robert Lamb.

I wanted to think about the responsibility of holding those two documents, but also how they produced this very clear arc about some histories of HIV/AIDS in the United States, which is to say, my friend Jim is a sort of poster boy from the first years of the pandemic: gay white man, very pretty, an actor. He died when he was 29 years old. There was no medication, and he had a very painful death. The videotape that I shot of him all those years ago when we were young was very strange actually, because I think his mental state was affected by his impending death.

And then fast forward 30 or so years: Juanita is a Black disabled woman who’s a lifelong AIDS activist, who doesn’t die of HIV, but dies in community that’s been produced around collaborative art making and is really committed to disability justice and dies within the time of COVID and because of health inequalities that were escalated because of COVID.

My responsibility, what I can learn from those tapes, what they tell me about HIV/AIDS, and also what they tell me about living through dying, and making community even as people are dying — that’s what started it.

Lauren: Can you tell me how the film itself explores grief, memory, loss, and those relationships?

Alex: The video wants to think about technologies of memory, various receptacles that hold something of a person that you loved after they die. It could be a trace of them, but it could be work you’ve done together. This is very important to this project. They are people that I engage in art making and activism with. I know that various technologies shape memory and shape grief differently.

So, it really wants to think about how VHS, which is what I shot Jim on, has a different almost metabolism than an iPhone video, which is what I shot Juanita on. While they are both media that are holding traces and memories and conversations and activity with these people, I think that they’re held differently.

I was thinking about those two media to think about material things, like in the case of the film, a sweater and a scarf that emerge. Then I extend that to my own body and I think about the fact that I’ve aged. Grief changes as the body holds it. I think about neighborhoods, so places that one returns to and how they trigger memories, but they change, so they hold memory differently as well.

I think the other thing I would want to say, just from having screened it quite a bit in small groups at this point: It doesn’t work with grief quite like we expect movies to. It’s not triumphant, it’s not organized around catharsis necessarily. It doesn’t have music that tells you when to feel bad or good. It doesn’t have the typical beats that cinema is organized around, but I think it has the typical beats that life is organized around, which is this kind of pulsing.

Sometimes grief feels like celebration. Sometimes grief feels like connection. And sometimes it’s very hard to process. Jim died when I was a girl, and I’ve lived with his death longer than he was alive. My grief for him is very different than my grief for Juanita, who died only a few years ago.

We’re in a time organized by grief and mourning. Even if it’s not for the loss of people, it’s for the loss of our democracy and the loss of structures that made sense to us. It lets you come in where you are and acknowledges that’s changing. It might even change over those 70 minutes of the video.

Lauren: You mentioned that iPhones metabolize grief differently than VHS. I’m wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the mixed media approach to this film, how you decided to combine all these different types of film making, and why that was important for you.

Alex: What it feels like to make media with different technologies, that’s always for me part of thinking of what medium is. A camcorder is actually heavy, and there’s a kind of commitment that to work with heavy equipment demands. iPhones are very light and they are very easy to use and they’re extremely easy to shoot things with and extremely easy to take that footage and put it somewhere else and distribute it and share it and see it.

And therefore, one of the ways that they’re different is that we’re constantly shooting video that is completely expendable. It’s hard to know the difference between the important things you shoot and the not important things you shoot. It’s interchangeable. So that lightness of the iPhone material, the lightness of social media, and I mean that literally but also metaphorically, is part of what I’m thinking about. When Juanita asked me to come shoot her on her deathbed, she had wanted me to shoot her on a camcorder and she didn’t have the power cord, so I took out my iPhone.

But it’s not just the technology. Watching someone die is a cosmic shift. If someone asks you to be part of that, that’s an incredible responsibility and it’s a heavy responsibility. It’s a beautiful responsibility. So, it’s not just that I had the iPhone. I had made this agreement. She had asked me and I didn’t even know why she had asked me initially. It’s in the footage, she tells me, but she’d asked me to do this. I wanted to mark the heaviness of the weight of it, the beauty of it.

This is where the project is about what it means to be in community and collaboration. It’s a very different kind of relationship to media making. It’s activist media making.

In Please Hold, I use video compositing a lot. I think it’s the visual and media language that defines this moment in history. It’s very desktop-looking on purpose and very collage-y. The collage holds VHS and iPhone videos next to each other, or digital video and iPhone video and then text on top of that. I’m interested in that collage aesthetic that flattens the discrete technologies. Then I work very hard to keep reminding you that they are discrete technologies.

In every shot of video, I tell you what kind of camera it was shot on and when it was shot because, again, I think that the computer screen that you and I are looking at right now equalizes, flattens things. I’m both interested in seeing that as an aesthetic and thinking about what it does.

The film is about grief, it’s about memory, but it’s also about communication. It’s also about me talking to people who have died and me talking about people who are very much alive, who I’m in activist community with. I’m trying to think visually about the sort of flatness of the screen and the depth of the interaction. That’s what that compositing does to me. But that’s also having the Zoom interviews where you see two people, like we’re doing right now, as opposed to a more traditional talking head. You’re constantly aware of the depth, the third dimension of the screen, because the listener produces that.

Lauren: I wanted to ask you about the Zoom interviews. How did you decide to incorporate these conversations with folks that you’re in activist community with?

Alex: Video Remains is the video that I made with my footage from my friend Jim’s and my one hour on the beach together in the last year of his life. It took me a long time to make that video and it’s very important to me. I think it has a place within the history of AIDS media that is a critical place.

This video [Please Hold] is referring to it in many ways and thinking about technological shifts. In Video Remains, I talked to my fellow AIDS activists, they were all women and lesbians, on the phone. That’s cut into the long take footage that Jim had asked that I shoot of him on the beach when he was telling the story of his life.

Fast forward to now, with these new technologies, I’m like, we wouldn’t talk on the phone, we would talk on Zoom. It parallels that method of sharing space and knowledge with collaborators and my activist community. The video that I made now is thinking about how COVID, and our experiences during lockdown in particular, rejiggered our expectations and relationships to communications technology.

It’s a recognition that that’s a new form of media making. I’m an activist media maker. I make things for nothing. I shoot them with whatever is at hand. I distribute them that way. And Zoom is an amazing, inexpensive form of technology to interview people. The interviews look and sound pretty good.

I am also trying to think about these different formats of connection, what it is to live together in a place, what it is to use a phone or Zoom, what it is to be in a place or be with a person who has been, that was recorded and you revisit.

The film really believes that we can continue to collaborate with the people we love after they die, or that I can, because I’m still asking the questions and working on projects and trying to make the changes that were very important to both me and Jim. I’m still committed. I need their voices. I need who they were to me and what they know and what we could make together. I can still use that, even when they’re no longer here, because we made these videos together. I’m so lucky.

Clockwise: James Robert Lamb, Pato Hebert, Alexandra Juhasz, Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (built from “Video Remains,” Alexandra Juhasz, 2005, Zoom interviews, 2023, and “I Want to Leave a Legacy,” Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, 2022, iPhone).

Lauren: How else has this work impacted your life?

Alex: Right now I’m starting DIY and activist distribution, which I’m doing by myself. I’m trying to get it out in the world, but trying to get out in the world under the terms that seem right for me.

In the book that I wrote with Ted Kerr, [we write about] the idea of “trigger films” or “trigger videos,” [videos] from the early part of the AIDS crisis that you would show, stop the video in the middle of a scene, and then people would talk about it. We use the word “trigger” now differently. We talk about this in the book, but both uses of “trigger” are about setting terms for healthy conversation.

I think that Please Hold is also a trigger film. I think that what it’s best for is to spark conversation. And I think that, like so much on the internet, it shouldn’t be watched alone by yourself, with two other things on your screen. That’s probably true of a lot of art films. But I’m saying, it’s not just any art film. It’s a film that holds the traces of two people who died, who ask to be seen. It takes a lot from us as contemporary media viewers to change the way we’ve been taught to watch to be more human and to be more caring and to be more present.

I’ve tried to put a tiny scrim between getting the film for free, which I’m letting you do, and watching it with more care. You have to fill out a little form that says, “I’m going to watch it by myself. I’m going to watch it with some people. I’m going to set up a screening.” Then I send you the link. I don’t know if that’s going to work. But I’ve never really cared how many people see things that I make. I care about the context in which things are seen. That’s true of activist media more generally.

I want that context to be respectful and contemplative and interpersonal and give people space to talk afterwards, which so little viewing does now, especially when things are digital. The main thing I’m doing is trying to move it in the world and have conversations where I can be present with other people with what it brings up.

Lauren: That’s beautiful. That’s such an interesting way to experiment with distribution. I love that. As you’re talking about care, I was even thinking about your film We Care that I’ve showed in class a number of times, that is also about care and dying, so I can see those through lines in your work.

Alex: I think that the norms of dominant cinema push to the edge a lot of the things that actually can and do happen when we consume media together. One of those is the idea of care. That’s something you could build around screenings.

I think people do it, but you need to think about, in what conditions do you do that? Because the consumption of media now that we’re all on our laptops, it’s just violent and hurtful. It doesn’t matter if you’re consuming something you like. It doesn’t make you feel good. It’s the opposite of care, even if you’re watching something beautiful. The extratextual conditions of making and screening activist media are as important as the piece of media itself. And that’s what I’m doing by building out my own distribution.

The reason I made this was to talk to people about AIDS, and to talk to people about HIV, and to talk to people about memory, and to talk to people about dying, and to talk to people about community, and to talk to people about all the ways we love each other and all the ways we help each other, and how beautiful it is to be in community. I want to have that conversation every time it’s screened.  I hope other people will talk to each other about those things. That’s why we make art, certainly activist art.

What we want from activist media is that you’re transformed, that you feel a transformation and you feel that you can interact, not just consume.

Lauren: That brings me to another question I wanted to ask. Can you tell me about the title Please Hold?

Alex: The first shot of the film — well it’s not the first shot anymore, it’s deeper into the film now — is me riding up an escalator at the Delansancy/Essex Street stop on the Lower East Side, the F train. It’s a long take, and I go up the staircase. I think it’s beautiful. It’s so dirty, and makes all this noise. It’s so industrial and of this other era and it evokes that neighborhood in New York City.

As you get to the top, you see this boy wearing this powder blue sweatshirt, and he’s on his phone, and he’s almost dancing. It’s like choreography. But if you look above him, there’s a LED sign and it’s saying, “Please hold the handrail.”

I was deep into editing the film and I’m like, “Oh my god, that sign says please hold!” If you listen to the film, I talk about holding all the time. The word “hold” is used in it over and over and over again. And I’ve already talked about it like that with you. I’m holding these memories, I’m holding these tapes. A lot of the people in the film help me think about holding things together.

My friend Ted [Kerr] talks about holding a sweatshirt of Jim’s that I had given him. That’s a way for Jim to stay with us, we hold it together. And then holding the Parkside, which is a gay bar, queer bar, and you’re holding that space. Jih-Fei [one of the interviewees in the film] talks about holding spaces when nobody will let you, which is very much about what we’re in right now. What it means to hold the space of trans identity or gender non-conforming identity or a bathroom that’s become dangerous territory, and they say you can’t use it, and you hold it. That is something that political people do.

The Parkside also holds ghosts, it holds porn magazines. So holding just constantly emerged in the process. But then the title was given to me by the Lower East Side. And of course, “please hold” is also what someone says on the phone in a not nice way, so it has that register as well. It makes you wait when you’re not ready to wait.

The film is also about walking as a technology of memory, how the world presents information to you when you’re ready to receive it. Walking can wake you up to take in input that you wouldn’t see. So the fact that the title is there because I’m walking in the neighborhood is very much an idea of the film that the world can help you too, if your body is open.

I’ve had the great luck to stay alive this whole time and my body is so different. There’s a lot of seeing me young and seeing me now in the split screens. There’s a lot seeing Juanita young and seeing Juanita now in split screens. There’s not that of Jim because I only have the images from that one period of his life and he didn’t get to live to be older.

My body at this age, I just turned 60, takes in the world differently than my body did when I was 29. And in a lot of the footage that you see, I’m 29. I actually understand the world differently through this technology. I think in a sexist world in particular, I say this as a cisgender woman, I think I understand the world much better in this body than I did when I was 29, and that’s why there’s so much ageism, especially against women, because people don’t want women to be smart in that way. They want to tell us these bodies are not useful tools and not intelligent receptacles. Quite the opposite, as we age, our bodies become smarter if we’re lucky, or wiser, or deeper, or more sophisticated. I do not need to be the 29 old girl that I see there. I’m very glad that I’m not.

Lauren: Thanks for sharing that. Is there anything else that you want to share, or that you want Autostraddle readers to know?

Alex: One of the things that I love about this movie is how queer it is. It is my definition of queer, everyone can have their own. What I love about it is that the characters that you meet are every kind of different. They’re every kind of deviant. They’re every kind of edge. And sure, you can say they’re lesbian, trans, gay, Jewish, Black, Asian, young, old.

But the movie is not committed to a particular slice of the queer world. It’s expansive about how queer love and queer community, queer analysis, queer ways of living and family and being political and caring and making relationships of care. That has been everything to me. And that’s true in my nuclear family, lesbian family, that’s very extended into other parental roles. It’s true in my queer romance with Jim. We lived together for many years.

It’s true in my very queer friendship with Juanita that crossed race and class and brought us together in an overt analysis that came from the celebration of gay and lesbian life and trans life.  So I want the readers of Autostraddle to behold a feminist queerness that is my community and is me. I love being in this community. I love being seen by this community.

I love speaking to this community. I love the way the film stretches that inclusion and also its limits. That’s the queer lifeworld that I draw from in that video.

Lauren: Since it has been a couple months since Trump’s inauguration, I’m wondering how you feel about the film coming out right now and what you feel the film has to say about this contemporary moment.

Alex: I am as confused and hurt and angry and afraid and uncertain as anybody. I don’t have any answers right now at all. Many of the things that I thought were answers don’t seem to be. That’s super scary.

But what I just said to you about queer community and queer love that is connected to activism — not just who you have sex with or who you want to go to a party with, although that’s part of it, but connected to working together to make the world better for the most disenfranchised, the people who are the most weak and the most threatened at any particular moment. And sometimes, like right now, that is trans people, right now that is people in our world with HIV and AIDS who are truly about to be decimated by the end of PEPFAR and threats to Americans’ access to free medication.

Queer love and queer community that’s organized around wanting to help each other and help the most disenfranchised — that is always a goodness. The minutes you can spend in it or the hours you can spend in it are worldbuilding. They’re being in the world that we want and we deserve and we can make, and even if we can’t right now respond to the huge threats, and even as they will be endangering people we love, or killing people. Killing people in Africa via [the end of] PEPFAR, killing people in Gaza, killing people in the Ukraine, killing people in the Congo, I could go on.

We as humans can make little reprieves, little pockets, little sparks of beauty and dignity and decency. And queer people have always done that. We’ve had to. And so watching the film together, talking together, that’s just an example of knowing that we can make moments of power. It might not be big. We talked about how how many people watch something is not a register that matters to me. Smallness is often what you need to have deep impact. We can be in community and learn with each other. And so we will do that. We can do that. We are doing that. We have done that. And it might not change the badness, but it is itself a goodness.

Lauren Herold: Thank you. That’s a beautiful way to end this conversation and also I feel like I needed to hear that today. So, thank you for saying that.

Alex: But see, this conversation is that, Lauren. It’s like, I see you. I heard what was happening in your life. Thank you for listening to me so much about my film. It’s simple, but we can and should and have to do that for each other all the time right now.

Movies with “Face” in the Title Ranked By Whether You Should Watch Them While Recovering from FFS

Facial feminization surgery — or the reason For Fuck’s Sake internet slang always confuses me — is a group of procedures that counteract the masculinizing effects of testosterone puberty. Jaw contouring, nose jobs, Adam’s Apple reductions, brow bone reductions, lip filler, cheek filler, and hairline changes are among the things people get with FFS. Sometimes the results are subtle, and sometimes they’re drastic.

My first years transitioning most of the results I saw were drastic. I was impressed — and let’s be honest a little jealous — but also felt complicated about changing my face. It took years and seeing the range of results — and let’s be honest having healthcare through my job — to realize what exactly I wanted for myself. I feel really confident about my choices of procedures (sorry I’m keeping my crooked Ashkenazi nose!) and my choice in surgeon, but it does still feel very science-fiction to go to sleep with one face and wake up with another. Even if the initial change will be the swelling that will eventually subside.

Luckily, the history of cinema has provided many explorations of faces and changing faces to process these feelings. I’ve decided to rank every movie I’ve ever seen with the word “face” in the title ranked by how enjoyable they would be to watch while recovering from FFS. I know, I know, some of these movies aren’t literally about faces and other movies that don’t have face in the title are more relevant. Whatever. Ever heard of a bit?

NOTE: I have not seen any of the following movies with face in the title. Let me know if I should watch them while recovering from surgery: Angel Face (1952), Face (2009), The Face of Love (2013), False Face (1977), The Last Face (2016), The Man Without a Face (1993), Stolen Face (1952)

12. A Face in the Crowd (1957)

This is a very good movie, but I’m sorry while recovering from surgery I do not recommend watching a prescient film about an egomaniac who uses his cult of personality among the “common man” to gain power. I also don’t think anyone in that state wants to grapple with director Elia Kazan, a very bad man who alas was one of the most talented and influential directors of the 20th century.

11. Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Another good movie, this one directly about faces and surgery. There might be a fun masochism to this, but personally I think it would be tough to watch since it’s more concerned with Christiane’s father’s shame around her face than her own feelings about it.

10. A Woman’s Face (1941)

Joan Crawford is so good in this, but there are about twenty George Cukor movies that would be more fun to watch while recovering from surgery. I also don’t think it’s a great vibe while recovering — or ever! — to equate disfigurement with bad behavior.

9. Frybread Face and Me (2023)

This is a really sweet coming-of-age movie about two Navajo cousins spending a summer together. This is the true neutral of the list. It would be a totally lovely film to watch while recovering from surgery, but there’s nothing about it that makes it more appealing as opposed to watching it at any other time.

8. Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

Being on a lot of drugs is part of the healing process and Bill and Ted are stoner icons. Is this third entry as good as the first two? No. But it does have Jack Haven and it’s nice to see a trans person on-screen while recovering from a trans-related surgery.

7. Funny Face (1957)

Kind of weird to watch old Fred Astaire woo young Audrey Hepburn — not everyone can be Bogart in Sabrina sorry! — but, I mean, it’s a Stanley Donen movie with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. How can that not feel like a balm against post-surgery pain?

6. Face to Face (1976)

This is not one of my favorite Ingmar Bergman movies/miniseries but the extended cut is nearly three hours long and while recovering from surgery you have a lot of time on your hands. Also it’s about an emotional breakdown, something many have warned me is common in the days just following FFS.

5. Baby Face (1933)

Barbara Stanwyck uses her sex appeal to destroy the lives of men and get ahead. I assume with my new face I’ll also have this power. It’s a good lesson for the newly beautiful/confident that in the end it feels better to use beauty for love instead of power.

4. The Face of Another (1966)

If you want to lean into questions of faces and identity, this is the movie to watch. It’s a challenging, at times unpleasant film, but I’d argue it’s very worth it.

3. Saving Face (2004)

Alice Wu’s first film is one of the best lesbian rom-coms of all time. If you’re someone looking for a post-surgery comfort movie, this is the one for you.

2. Face/Off (1997)

Escapist entertainment AND explorations of faces and identity? I have not seen this since I was a kid but I might just have to rewatch it myself during my recovery. Nicolas Cage and John Travolta chewing scenery as each other in a John Woo action movie is irresistible. Also Margaret Cho is in it!!

1. Smiley Face (2007)

This also topped my list of best movies to watch stoned. I think I’ll just keep putting it at the top of movie lists until every person in the world watches it. This movie hits so hard with just a little edible — I can’t even imagine how incredible it would be on pain meds.

Fingers crossed I don’t need revisions unless you want another one of these lists for the word faces. Faces (1968), Faces Places, The Two Faces of January, The Three Faces of Eve… hmm maybe I’ll do it anyway.

Over Half a Century Before ‘Emilia Pérez’, the Story of a Gender-Fluid Gangster Was Done Right

A hypermasculine gangster hides out with a genderfluid throuple and slowly begins to shift his identity. No, this is not the plot of a new movie aiming to capitalize off the success of Emilia Pérez. It’s the plot of Performance (1970), a classic of counterculture cinema starring none other than Mick Jagger.

While the film — a collaboration between painter turned director Donald Cammell and cinematographer turned director Nicolas Roeg — is often discussed as a snapshot of the late 60s, it still feels sharp and relevant today. The new restoration now out from The Criterion Collection looks and sounds gorgeous with special features contextualizing the unique movie while leaving a window open for modern interpretation.

The first half of the movie is almost exclusively focused on Chas (James Fox), a gangster heavy so masculine and violent he incites fear in his own bosses. While it incorporates elliptical editing that hints at something more experimental, this first part of the film has a fairly straight-forward mob movie narrative. But then Chas goes on the run and meets effeminate musician Turner (Mick Jagger) and his two girlfriends — the voluptuous Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and the androgynous Lucy (Michèle Breton).

Plot gives way to sex and drugs and conversations about gender. As Pherber teases Chas, questioning whether or not he has a feminine side, he exclaims, “I’m normal!” He tries to hold onto this sense of normalcy, but he can’t resist his fascination with his new housemates. And they can’t resist their fascination with him.

Normies want proximity to queers, queers want proximity to normies. It’s a classic dynamic. But the film reveals the intricacies in how this dynamic manifests. Chas will have sex with Lucy even as he says she looks like a boy, but he won’t have sex with the more feminine Turner, his true object of desire. And while the queers are interested in Turner that interest proves dangerous. It’s fun for normies to dabble in queerness — often less fun for the queers.

During a drug trip (a dream?), Turner embodies Chas, appearing as a masculine gangster. Most critical thought views this as Turner and Chas swapping identities. But Jagger’s gangster feels so much more like a drag performance than a true shift. Watching the film as a queer person, it feels like Turner and his girlfriends are slowly welcoming Chas into their world until they’re forced to regret it. Chas might be changed for the better — but at what cost?

Influential, puzzling, and still effective, Performance is a reminder that the struggle between gender fluidity and traditional gender performance isn’t new. They take what they want and then get rid of us until we find a way to rise again.

Performance is available on 4K and standard Blu-Ray from The Criterion Collection.

Free Dog Name Ideas That Are Just the Names of Lesbian Movie Characters

Ever since I watched Princess Cyd in 2018 (and then rewatched it the next day with my then partner) I’ve wanted to get a pit bull and name her Princess Cyd. Imagine! Most days she’d be called Cyd. When she’s really good Princess. And when she’s bad Cydney. It’s a perfect dog name, and it would be a great excuse to tell more people to watch Stephen Cone’s lovely film.

Alas, I still do not have Princess Cyd. I grew up with dogs, so I know the responsibility being a proper dog owner entails. Dogs are expensive and they require a stability I don’t have. I’m in a long distance relationship and maybe if I wanted to get a tiny dog, I could plan to travel with them, but a pit bull or even most pit bull mixes would be too challenging to take back and forth between Brooklyn and Toronto.

But I haven’t given up! Someday I’ll have Princess Cyd — after all I moved into an apartment near a dog park like some chidlless 30 year olds move into an area with good elementary schools — and, in the mean time, I’ve come up with this list of other excellent dog names from other queer movies.

1. Jaguar, for a dog who is bold and would risk anything for someone they love like Maria Schrader in Aimée & Jaguar
2. Benedetta (Benny for short), for a dog who according to some may not go to heaven like Virginie Efira in Benedetta
3. PJ and Josie, for a pair of dogs who like to play and fight like Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms
4. Corky, for a dog with a tough exterior and a tender heart like Gina Gershon in Bound
5. Graham, for a dog who will love you before you love yourself like Clea DuVall in But I’m a Cheerleader
6. (Martha) Dobie, for a dog who was named after a Harry Potter character years after that would’ve been cool but now it feels really not cool so you want to change it to Shirley MacLaine’s character in The Children’s Hour
7. Valentine, for a dog who will follow you around as your little assistant like Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria
8. Zoinx, for a dog who is an out-of-this-world weirdo like Susan Ziegler in Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
9. Lucy Diamond, for a dog who is a lovable villain like Jordana Brewster in D.E.B.S.
10. Zen, for a dog who reminds you to be a free ass motherfucker like Tessa Thompson in Dirty Computer
11. Ronit, for a dog who likes to slobber like Rachel Weisz in Disobedience
12. Diggy, for a dog who will stay by your side through any amount of hijinks like Kiersey Clemons in Dope
13. Sergio, for a dog who will stay in bed with you for days like Laia Costa in Duck Butter
14. Jobu Tupaki, for a dog who traverses the multiverse like Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All At Once
15. Queen Anne, for a dog who gets what she wants when she wants it like Olivia Colman in The Favourite
16. Legs, for a dog who is fiercely loyal and just fierce like Angelina Jolie in Foxfire
17. Idgie, for a dog who loves pie like Mary Stuart Masterson in Fried Green Tomatoes
18. Ricki, for a dog who loves turkey time like Jennifer Lopez in Gigli (actually turkey is bad for dogs, but also Ben is bad for Jen so…)
19. Harper, for a dog who you want to give a second chance — and a third and a fourth — like Mackenzie Davis in Happiest Season
20. Theodora, for a dog who will cuddle you through life’s scariest moments like Claire Bloom in The Haunting
21. Paulie, for a dog who loves a little too hard or just really loves birds like Piper Perabo in Lost & Delirious
22. Dylan, for a dog who loves her mommy like Lil Harlow in Mommy Is Coming
23. Lady Divine, for a dog who is fun and filthy like Divine in Multiple Maniacs
24. Nimona, for a dog with spunk who is hard to pin down like Chloë Grace Moretz in Nimona
25. Diana Nyad, for a dog who really loves to swim like Annette Bening in NYAD
26. Tory, for a dog who really loves to run like Patrice Donnelly in Personal Best
27. Sophie, for a dog who will live with you and your soulmate on the French seaside like Lùana Bajrami in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
28. Cleo, for a dog who is a ride or die like Queen Latifah in Set It Off
29. Lydia Tàr, for a dog who controls all of your time like Cate Blanchett in TÀR
30. Suzie, for a dog who is a wild thing like Neve Campbell in Wild Things

Or, you can always honor an Autostraddle icon, and name your dog Carol.

New York Lesbians! Watch the Best Sapphic Cinema This Week at the Film Forum

Over a decade ago, I went on my first real date to go see Les Diaboliques at the Film Forum in NYC. We both loved the movie and everything was going great… until the evening was cut short by my date’s ex-girlfriend and a crisis of jealousy worthy of the sapphic drama we’d witnessed on-screen.

My love story with this girl may have been cut short, but my love story with the Film Forum had only just begun. In the years that have passed, I’ve seen a wide variety of premieres and classics, discovering new gems and revisiting old favorites.

Starting today, the Film Forum begins their series Sapph-O-Rama billed as “a broad look at the eccentric, enduring, and genre-encompassing history of the Lesbian image in cinema through the last century.” From today through February 13, there will be screenings of films including But I’m a Cheerleader, Pariah, Mädchen in Uniform, Desert Hearts, Saving Face, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, and The Watermelon Woman.

In addition to the classics, there are also lesser known and lesser available films including Caged, Fucking Åmål, She Must Be Seeing Things, MURDER and murder, A Woman Like Eve, and Madame X: An Absolute Ruler. And, finally, some Hollywood classics with very textual subtext properly being entered here as canon: Salomé, The Wild Party, Calamity Jane, and Johnny Guitar.

Best series ever, right? What if I told you there is even more? There’s also: Je Tu Il Elle, Born in Flames, Shakedown, Tomboy, The Killing of Sister George, Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, Daughters of Darkness, Desperate Living, Dark Habits, and Caged Heat.

I recently moved back to New York for a lot of reasons and the best repertory film programming in the country was among them. This series, programmed by Andrea Torres and Emily Greenberg, is a dream — a perfect combination of films to revisit and films to discover.

If you don’t live in New York… well, I’m sorry. But it’s a good reminder to check out the repertory programming in your city or town! Also a lot of these films are available online if you want to have your own mini film festival.

What’s most important is to remember the history of sapphic cinema is rich and plentiful! My job is watching lesbian movies and even I haven’t seen six of these.

I’m excited to change that the way these films were meant to be seen: on the big screen.

Check out the full schedule for Sapph-O-Rama on the Film Forum website. 

“Fitting In” Is a Queer and Heartfelt Coming-Of-Age Movie About Body Diversity

This review contains mild spoilers for Fitting In.

Molly McGlynn’s Fitting In opens with a quote from Simon Debeauvoir and a quote from Diablo Cody — Jennifer’s Body to be exact. “Hell is a teenage girl,” the screen reads, and then the film goes on to show us its truth. Hell is a teenage girl, hell is being a teenage girl, hell is being a girl, hell is being a person, hell is having a body.

The movie begins like an average teen girl coming-of-age tale. Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) is an average girl who spends her days running track, bickering with her single mom (Emily Hampshire), talking about sex with her best friend Vivian (Djouliet Amara), and lusting after boys, specifically Adam (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai). Vivian is more experienced, something Lindy hopes to change as she and Adam get closer.

But at 17 years old Lindy has never had her period. She’s managed to ignore this until she goes to the gynecologist to get birth control and mentions it. A series of invasive tests later, she finds out she has MRKH syndrome which means she has no uterus and no vaginal canal.

With the help of a strong performance from Ziegler, McGlynn allows Lindy to react to his news in a realistically teenage girl way. Instead of confiding in Vivian or even vaguely confiding in Adam, she antagonizes and alienates herself from both. She sabotages her track career, fights with her mom, begins drinking and smoking more, and stumbles through sexual exploration.

The one positive shift is her newfound connection with Jax (Ki Griffin), a transmasculine intersex student who goes to Lindy’s school. Lindy is drawn to Jax’s charm and Jax’s own experience with an unconventional body. But even this bright spot finds a shadow in Lindy’s fear of her queerness — and any reminder that she is different.

And Jax is a teenager too. While they may be more settled in their queerness, they approach Lindy with a touch of oversensitivity. They’re justified in their frustrations with the way Lindy treats them, but McGlynn allows them to react to these frustrations without perfection. There are visible, human cracks in Jax’s mask of confidence. They’re also just a kid trying to fit in — or stand out on their own terms.

While Jax is thankfully more than a symbol in the movie, their presence does deepen its message. As a trans woman, I related a lot to Lindy’s struggle. It’s hard to be a woman who doesn’t have a vagina and can’t have kids. Throughout much of the film, Lindy is dilating to try to deepen and create a vagina, something I’ve never seen on-screen despite being commonplace for friends of mine who have had bottom surgery. Even the responses of “you’re lucky” that Lindy receives about not getting her period had a recognizable sting.

Jax’s character makes that connection I felt to Lindy more than an accident. Fitting In is explicitly a celebration of our different bodies and the disconnect of certain biological markers from gender. Even some cis women don’t have uteruses. Even some cis women need to dilate.

It’s a positive for all of us if we work to detach our assumptions about biology. It’s a positive for all of us if we approach other peoples’ bodies and our own with less judgment.

Having a body might be hell, but Fitting In shows us just how beautiful that hell can be.

Fitting In is now in theatres.

Who’s To Blame for the On-Set Conditions of “The Color Purple” (2023)?

Feature image by Cindy Ord for SiriusXM via Getty Images

Imagine you’re a Black artist working on a studio musical with a large Black ensemble and a massive ninety-million-dollar budget. Doesn’t that sound exemplary, if not revolutionary? It’s hardly been done since The Wiz. But here’s the kicker: The studio expects you to get into a production car and drive yourself to set. Early in the day or late at night, you must go vroom-vroom in your car no matter how much the soles on your feet are hurting from your many laborious hours singing and dancing.

That’s, unfortunately, what The Color Purple ensemble were expected to endure, and it leaves me baffled and infuriated that a movie with such a massive price tag didn’t give its cast better conditions for a set more conducive to their creative work.

Earlier this month, following her courageous speech about her unfair pay wages for her roles post-Empire, cast member Taraji P. Henson, who plays Shug Avery, sat down with The New York Times and publicly discussed the working conditions she and her co-stars experienced during production. Henson revealed the production gave them rental cars to drive to set. “I can’t drive myself to set in Atlanta,” Henson shared. “This is insurance liability. It’s dangerous. Now they robbing people. What do I look like, taking myself to work by myself in a rental car?” Mind you, production shoots can go over eight to twelve or even sixteen hours a day. For a film with rigorous choreography in numerous numbers, I can’t stop thinking about her poor soles having to hit the pedal after hitting those beats. “Can I get a driver or security to take me?'” I’m not asking for the moon,” she continued. “They’re like, ‘Well, if we do it for you, we got to do it for everybody.’ Well, do it for everybody! It’s stuff like that, stuff I shouldn’t have to fight for.”

Shortly after, Academy Award Nominee Danielle Brooks voiced concerns about her experience at an awards conversation panel. She revealed the cast initially had no dressing rooms nor trailers during filming. “I remember when we first came in, and we were doing rehearsal, and they put us all in the same space, and we didn’t have our own dressing rooms at the time,” she said, adding how they also weren’t given food. At the behest of Oprah, one of the film’s other producers — Steven Spielberg, Scott Sanders, or Quincy Jones — ensured those issues were resolved. Winfrey had the power to step in, but responsibilities regarding the budget are beyond her and her fellow producers at that level. Winfrey retorted in that interview, “I’m not in charge of the budget.”

Winfrey is right. Oprah and the other high level producers aren’t in charge of budget details. Winfrey, Spielberg, Sanders, and Jones’ jobs were to assemble the right crew to bring the musical version to life and get funding from the parent studio. If there’s anything they are possibly at fault for, it’s not the minutiae of money allocation, but in who they hired to take on that responsibility — or who they hired to hire who to take on that responsibility.

The Color Purple already had the unfair advantage of being commissioned by a studio that had gone through a hell of a merger preceding its development announcement. It wasn’t until August 2020, the peak pandemic era, that the pre-production process began with Blitz Bazawule signing on as director following his work on Black is King. At that time, Toby Emmerich was acting chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group. Then, as time has told, Discovery bought out the Warner Bros. brand from AT&T, with the now David Zaslav-owned Warner Bros. Discovery starting its operations in April 2022 — a few weeks after the film went into production in Atlanta. As Emmerich stepped back in June 2022 amidst principal photography, MGM’s Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy swooped in to take his reins.

Winfrey, Jones, and Spielberg immediately had to go to the new guards for financial assistance to ensure the film looked as vibrant as Bazawule’s ambitions. They also had to answer to ignorant and lofty expectations from some unnamed higher-ups who wanted Rihanna and Beyonce to contribute to the film given the ballooning budget, to which Winfrey bluntly responded that it wasn’t going to happen. In a Hollywood Reporter piece on the film’s production, Winfrey expressed, “I would have to say that [Warner Bros. co-chairs] Pam [Abdy] and Mike De Luca got it from the first time they saw the film and understood that they heard me and heard Steven and heard the team when we said, ‘This is the reason why this has to be done.’ You have to give us more money to do this because this is a cultural manifesto in a way for our community, and it deserves to have the support that’s needed to make it what it needs to be.”

90 million dollars for a budget is a reasonable yet hefty price tag for a musical compared to other musical features in recent memory — closing out slightly below Spielberg’s West Side Story $100 mil and above In the Heights’ $55 mil. However, according to the Motion Picture Association, The Color Purple production contributed over $74.2 Million of its budget to the professionals and artists working in Georgia. The report states, “Over 81 days of filming around Greater Atlanta and Savannah, The Color Purple contributed over $74.2 million in direct spending to the local economy, including payments to the more than 2,500 local Georgian cast and crew hired for the production.”

When it comes to running a production set, the job of where the budget goes is delegated to a line producer or a unit production manager. Run the World‘s showrunner Rachelle Williams-BenAry said it best in a tweet, “Atp who was the Line Producer/UPM on The Color Purple cuz it’s their job to negotiate the trailers, hire PAs, get teamsters/PAs to drive talent, oversee production issues.” Given the film was primarily set in one location, all of its budget handlings was in the hands of one Dominic Cancilla, whose experience has wavered between low-budget B-action movies like Machete and Get the Gringo and television with shows like Step Up: High Water. While the latter proves Cancilla’s experience with musicals, it’s clear he does not have experience with a movie of this scale. So the question becomes: Who hired this man?

All the responsibility, ranging from the lack of drivers and trailers for the cast to food for the crew, boils down to Cancilla and anyone overseeing Cancilla who made the conditions on The Color Purple so undesirable that Winfrey had to step in.

According to the MPA budget breakdown piece, what’s frustrating about this ordeal is that $3.67 million was spent on transportation and car rentals and $1.2 million on local catering for cast and crew. How long did Winfrey take to intervene and use the budget on her crew’s hospitality and care? Where did a good amount of that money go? It surely wasn’t the main cast’s service.

As much as I would love to point my fingers at Zaslav — who has been responsible for the cancellation and mistreatment of many queer and Black shows and movies — the blame seems to lie primarily with the line producer, his immediate superiors, and his team. Especially if Winfrey’s claim that the new executives helped provide a bigger film production budget is believed.

If the budget reports are factual and if that amount of money was simply mishandled by Cancilla, several questions are raised. Who hired Cancilla? Why was he allowed to stay in the position? And, most importantly, why did the responsibility fall on talent themselves to ask for better treatment?

This is a near triple digit musical and some of the best actresses working today received worse accommodations than many indies. To paraphrase Henson, they weren’t asking for the moon. They were asking for industry standard.

Sundance 2024: “Love Lies Bleeding” Is a Queer and Carnal Neo-Noir Western

Autostraddle is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for our coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

“Careful where you sleep here, it’s dangerous.”

It’s rural New Mexico in the late 80s and everyone is glistening with sweat and desire. An ugliness permeates the landscape coupled with the threat of violence. This is the world of Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’s darkly funny and queer neo-noir western about love, family and revenge. In the vein of films like Thelma & Louise and the Wachowski Sisters’ Bound, we are taken on an unforgettable, brutal journey.

The quiet Lou (Kristen Stewart) works at a grimy gym cleaning toilets and being bored out of her mind when Jackie (Katy O’Brian) and her impressive muscles saunter into her life. Jackie is a young bodybuilder from Oklahoma, training for an upcoming competition in Las Vegas and looking for a job. Lou is instantly smitten and a late-night hookup quickly becomes a blooming romance filled with passionate sex, eggs, and steroids. Lou — turned on by Jackie’s growing muscles — gets her lover started on the juice. Jackie moves and starts a waitressing job at a nearby gun range. But Lou was a loner for a reason and once this new woman enters her life, her troubles start to catch up with her.

Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) is married to the abusive JJ (Dave Franco) but refuses to leave. So Lou stays, bringing her new girlfriend into the complicated family dynamic. And as if that isn’t enough, Jackie’s boss is Lou’s estranged father (Ed Harris) — also named Lou — and he uses their relationship to try and reconnect with his daughter. No one knows for sure where his wife is and two nosy FBI agents are curious about that mystery. Glass crafts a caustic web of familial and professional entanglements that threaten to derail Jackie and Lou’s love story. But it’s not just fate that’s interfering — there’s also the steroids.

Not much is known about Jackie’s past aside from the implication that she can’t go home again. She’s young, impulsive, and dedicated to getting as big and strong as possible. But as her steroid use spirals out of control, she starts to lose her grip on reality. Lou can see it, but she doesn’t want to let her go. And when Beth ends up in the hospital badly beaten, it sets off a bloody chain of events as Lou fights to protect herself and Jackie as they try to avoid the police and get out of town. Complicating matters is Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), Lou’s jealous and suspicious ex-lover who will do anything to get her away from Jackie.

Full of twists and turns, Love Lies Bleeding blends its noir elements with pure body horror as Jackie transforms into something beyond human. Her strength both scares and excites Lou and their attraction to each other is brash and carnal. Stewart and O’Brian have explosive chemistry, gazing at each other with an intensity that feels both too soon and eternal. It’s almost as if fate has brought them together to look after each other. Though lacking in physical strength, Lou gets her power from love, devoting herself to looking after Jackie no matter what. Just as Jackie is addicted to steroids, Lou is addicted to her.

There aren’t many lesbian films like Love Lies Bleeding. Glass’s sophomore feature is a truly unique vision of two misfit women who blow up their lives and the world around them. Expanding on the themes of her debut Saint Maud, Glass once again explores the poetry of brutality and the transformation of the body for worship as well as pleasure. There’s no one way to describe the nature of love or what it takes to hold on to it. Even with only two films under her belt, it’s clear that Glass is fascinated with desperate women. Not simply to gawk at them, but to push us as an audience to descend into madness alongside them, if only for a short while. 

Love Lies Bleeding is an exciting, instant classic that will hopefully usher in a new era of unapologetically weird lesbian cinema.

Love Lies Bleeding will be released in theatres on March 8. 

Sundance 2024: A Queer and Trans Festival Recap

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance 2024, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

I’ve been covering film festivals at Autostraddle for over four years. At first, I just reviewed a selection of queer titles, but starting with Sundance 2021, I began writing capsule reviews for every movie I watched. Usually, this post comes out at the end of the festival as a round-up — this year, for Sundance 2024, we tried something different.

Because Sundance has continued to split their festival between in-person and virtual screenings, most of the movies I watched could be watched by all of you at-home during their viewing window. That’s why this year I released my capsule reviews daily as I watch the films. I hope this gave some of you the chance to not only read about the films, but watch them for yourself! And, if not, don’t worry. Most of these films be released sometime in the next year.

I love writing about queer film — and a lot of these movies are queer — but I also believe there’s a great importance for queer and trans critical voices to respond to a wide range of cinema. I’m honored to have been one of those voices for another year at Sundance.

I Saw the TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

Read full review. 

Brief History of a Family (dir. Jianjie Lin)

At first glance, Jianjie Lin’s debut feature appears to be an understated (and sexless) take on what I’d call a Teorema story and what audiences today might call a Saltburn. A mysterious stranger is welcomed into a bourgeoisie (or even wealthier) family and one-by-one the stranger develops connections with each person, tearing the family apart.

But Brief History of a Family approaches this familiar tale through the specific lens of China’s one child policy that began in 1980 and lasted until 2016. With a microscopic eye, the film zooms into the dynamics of this family and the ways they adjust — and fail to adjust — to the arrival of someone who becomes a second child, a new sibling. It’s a restrained work with occasional bursts of violence that may resonate more deeply with those more familiar with and affected by this policy, but that I still found rich and compelling through a broader lens. Many families are a combustive mix of contrasting energies waiting to explode.

Tendaberry (dir. Haley Elizabeth Anderson)

Part neorealist drama, part multimedia fantasia, Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s striking debut is a character study cracked open by its protagonist’s curiosity. Kota Johan plays Dakota, a 23-year-old who works at a drugstore in Brooklyn and spends her free time hanging with her Ukrainian boyfriend. When he returns to Kyiv to take care of his sick father, Dakota’s life begins to fall apart as challenges compound.

With its handheld cinematography — both gritty and dreamy — and its Brooklyn setting, the film recalls the work of Eliza Hittman. But its voiceover narration and use of archival footage feels unique to Anderson and to the inquisitive worldview of her main character. After over a century of cinema, it’s rare to get a portrait of New York that feels fresh, and yet by seeing the city through the specificity of Dakota, Anderson succeeds.

The film meanders with some chapters of Dakota’s life and interludes of Dakota’s thoughts feeling less essential for the story being told. But given Anderson’s cinematic talent and Johan’s on-screen presence, even these moments are compelling to watch. It’s a film as unruly and magnificent as the character and city it portrays.

Kota Johan in Tendaberry

Love Machina (dir. Peter Sillen)

Martine and Bina Rothblatt want their love to live forever. That’s why nearly two decades ago they began recording “mindfiles” and eventually uploaded them to a humanoid robot modeled after Bina, named Bina48.

Martine, the inventor of satellite radio, is a trans woman. And there’s something compelling about this future-minded CEO who feels no limits in her work, her gender, her love, or even her eventual death. There is a compelling story to be told about this couple who have four children together and refer to themselves by a combined name. (They prefer to think of themselves as one entity rather than two.)

But this documentary falters in its attempts to contextualize their story. While the film does allow space for those who question the actual intelligence of Bina48 and the complications of using a Black woman as a model for a robot largely designed and handled by white men, the film still feels too safe in its approach to this complicated story. As much as I despise the recent onslaught of supposed “AI” and its impact on multiple industries, I’m hesitant to ever dismiss any technology outright. And yet I found myself frustrated with the framing that Martine’s transness is somehow a signifier of her futurist perspective. Trans people are not a sign of the future. We have always existed. Humanoid robots, however, have not.

Powerful people seeking a cure for death have also always existed. They have not succeeded and nothing about this surface-level documentary convinced me that will change.

Frida (dir. Carla Gutiérrez)

Read full review.

Black Box Diaries (dir. Shiori Ito)

Is the point of journalism to gather and present facts or to reinforce the narratives of the powerful? This is what I often question when people fetishize objectivity in journalism.

A young journalist herself, Shiroi Ito used her investigative skills for her own case after she was sexually assaulted by established journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi. While unconventional for someone to be both the subject and the reporter, it was her only option when ignored by law enforcement — due to antiquated Japanese rape laws and Yamaguchi’s connection to then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Ito’s case — and her book Black Box about the case — helped launch Japan’s Me Too movement. This documentary is a personal account of Ito’s fight to have her voice heard, as well as a display of much of the primary evidence she gathered. It also shows the journalistic possibilities of someone being both subject and reporter. There is a truth revealed in this telling that wouldn’t be possible without Ito’s own voice. We are allowed to see not only the facts of her case, but the immense toll this fight takes on her life. To not witness that part is to not witness the entirety of the truth. Sometimes a polished presentation of information is even more incomplete than subjectivity.

Watching the film, Ito is impressive in her courage, in her commitment to justice and truth and creating a better society for all. But the most important parts of the film are when she lets us see her exhaustion, the passage of time, the cruelty. Even the most impressive activist, the most impressive survivor, the most impressive journalist, is still a human being.

Malu (dir. Pedro Freire)

A portrait of three women — and three generations in Brazil’s volatile 20th century — Pedro Freire’s debut is a layered and captivating character drama. The titular Malu (Yara De Novaes) is a former stage actress living in 1990s Rio with her religious mother (Juliana Carneiro Da Cunha) and her younger queer friend, Tabira (Átila Bee). They are frequently visited by Malu’s daughter Joana (Carol Duarte), also an actress, who is torn between her radical mother and conservative grandma.

Anchored by four stunning performances, Freire doesn’t hold back, allowing his characters to fight as hard as they love. Their conflicts are fundamental, going beyond the interpersonal and encompassing issues of politics, illness, and generational trauma. There are gulfs between these characters — especially the three women — that no amount of care can traverse.

A film as much about generational disappointment as it is personal and familial disappointment, Freire deftly explores specific and universal discord while always prioritizing character. This is a remarkable film — a work of urgency, a work of compassion, a work of love.

Carol Duarte and Juliana Carneiro Da Cunha in Malu

Sebastian (dir. Mikko Mäkelä)

Read full review. 

Igualada (dir. Juan Mejía Botero)

While I relish the opportunity to be educated about another country’s political process and to learn more about current Colombian Vice President Francia Elena Márquez Mina, I wish this documentary went deeper. It presents a simple portrayal of Márquez’s unprecedented grassroots presidential campaign and introduction to the Márquez as a person but only hints at complication.

There’s a moment when one of Márquez’s most loyal staffers begins to doubt the possibility of their movement existing within the political structure at all. It’s a question that is not explored further, because the film ends when it should begin. Márquez is named as Gustavo Petro’s running mate and the rest is told in the credits.

Given the threats of violence Márquez faces and her current position in government, it’s understandable that there were limits to what this documentary could be as a film. The archival footage of Márquez over a decade ago shows how committed she was to her community and country long before she became a sensation. With Márquez’s future and the future of Colombia in mind, it makes sense the film could look back with a clearer eye than it looks forward. Ultimately, it’s strategic to lean toward the simple, to lean toward the inspirational — at least, it’s a strategy for a worthwhile cause.

Girls Will Be Girls (dir. Shuchi Talati)

Until she meets new student Sri, 16 year old Mira is so perfect she’s her class prefect. She studies hard, cares about the rules, and seems even more conservative than her vivacious mother. But she’s still a teenager and once she falls for Sri, she’s determined to explore her sexuality with the same success she’s always brought to the sciences.

There have been many stories of adolescent sexual discovery on-screen. Schuchi Talati’s film stands out due to the unique relationship between Mira and her mother. Having married Mira’s father young, at a more conservative time in India when casual dating wasn’t an option for her, she’s as in need of stimulation and freedom as her daughter. This results in a dynamic where she seems to be competing for the attention of her daughter’s new boyfriend — something that less delicately would belong in a psychosexual thriller, but here is alternating sad and human and frustrating and tender. Preeti Panigrahi as Mira and Kani Kusruti as Mira’s mother create characters that are both recognizable and unique.

This film shows the nuanced impact of patriarchy past and present and the unlikely bonds we can form to fight back.

The Mother of All Lies (dir. Asmae El Moudir)

A staggering work of documentary filmmaking, Asmae El Moudir recreates her personal history and a tragic chapter in Morocco’s history with her family as witness. Using miniatures constructed by her and her dad, El Moudir finds a way to capture a story hidden by her grandmother and buried by the government.

With the cinematic eye of the best stop motion filmmakers, El Moudir’s use of miniatures goes beyond gimmick or mere necessity. The recreations are gripping and emotional, the hovering bodies moving the tiny people and objects only add to their power. It’s a combination of group therapy and a journalistic documentation of state violence. The horrors inflicted on people are passed down through the generations — whether or not the horrors themselves are discussed openly.

In the Summers (dir. Alessandra Lacorazza)

Read full review.

In the Land of Brothers (dir. Alireza Ghasemi, Raha Amirfazli)

A triptych of stories about Afghan refugees in Iran, this is a furious work of political filmmaking told through a series of tender stories. Each a decade apart — 2001, 2011, and 2021 — every chapter revolves around a secret, one member of this family concealing something unfathomable in order to protect another.

Iranian filmmakers Alireza Ghasemi and Raha Amirfazli reveal the empty compassion of the surrounding Iranian citizens. Their acts of supposed kindness are as self-serving as their government that only grants citizenship to the family’s of deceased soldiers. There is an immense gulf between the Iranian people and the Afghan refugees that recalls similar dynamics around the world. Almost every place has a select group spared even the knowledge of the hardship that surrounds them.

But the film would not work as a political statement if it weren’t for the performances of Mohammed Hosseini, Hamideh Jafari, and Bashir Nikzad as the chapters’ three leads. They layer their characters’ desperation and grief with a humanity that denies pity. Their characts do what they have to do to survive and to take care of their family, but they shouldn’t have to. No one should have to endure these trials.

While the film is most overtly critical of Iran, it’s impossible to watch this as an American and not feel the impact of our country’s international violence. How many families were made refugees due to the various conflicts of the Cold War? How many more in the wars following 9/11? How many more today as the U.S. backs Israel’s genocide against Palestine? The twenty years of the film are also the twenty years of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. How many more families became refugees in those two decades? Where did those people end up? What were they made to endure? What are they still enduring today?

Hamideh Jafari in In the Land of Brothers

Agent of Happiness (dir. Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó)

Following Amber, a man who works for the Bhutanese government’s happiness index, this documentary reveals the impossibility of measuring something as complex as a good life. At first, it appears the story will be a simple portrait of rural contentment as individuals explain their happiness by their children and number of cows. But as Amber contends with his own dissatisfaction as someone undocumented and unmarried, the film spends time with other Bhutanese people struggling to find joy.

One of these individuals is a trans woman who describes her fear, her loneliness, and her desire to be more beautiful. And yet, like gender, happiness is not a binary. Some of the film’s most touching — and happy! — moments are between this woman and her loving mother. It shows even when we’re faced with hardship, we can find respite in those who love us fully.

Well-balanced between its various real life characters, Agent of Happiness also succeeds in showing the absurdity of a government measuring happiness while being the cause of misery. Amber and his family are denied citizenship despite being born in Bhutan. Many individuals interviewed say they can’t even consider happiness when they’re so busy working. When the — very high — happiness rating flashes on-screen before the credits, it shows this whole endeavor to be a charade. Numbers can’t capture human emotion — but the tender and astute snapshots of this documentary succeed where the data fails.

Reinas (dir. Klaudia Reynicke)

Toward the end of the film, mostly single mom Elena (Jimena Lindo) admits things are bad in the politically tumultuous Lima of the early 90s, then adding, “But we’re privileged.” It’s that privilege that allows most of this film to have the laidback vibe of a largely uneventful family dramedy. The father of Elena’s kids (Gonzalo Molina) has returned just as they’re set to leave the country and he’s full of jokes, charm, and lies. There are mentions of a curfew, but otherwise the focus is the family.

But bourgeois privilege is insufficient protection. And the abrupt tonal shift in the film’s last act is a fitting reminder of the often blurred lines between our intimate dramas and the political dramas taking place around us. With an excellent soundtrack, strong performances, and a formal patience that matches the film’s plotting, this is a strong work that balances the micro and macro of life.

Desire Lines (dir. Jules Rosskam)

Read full review.

Love Me (dir. Sam and Andy Zuchero)

A love story between a satellite and a smart buoy taking place long after the extinction of man, Sam and Andy Zuchero’s debut is funny, devastating, and undeniably audacious. None of this would work without the incredible performances from Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as both an influencer couple the smart buoy idolizes and the human manifestations of the buoy and satellite in their shared cyber space.

While the film is less original when it explores the challenges of human marriage, it’s wonderful when its satellite and buoy are searching for humanity and companionship. An immense amount of emotion is projected on the buoy and satellite even in their natural forms — and this is without the humanizing animation of a movie like Wall-E. Like last year’s Crimes of the Future, this film is a showcase for Stewart’s comedic talent. Even when she’s just a voice represented by a crude avatar, she’s able to communicate as much with humor as she is with pathos in the film’s more painful moments.

.There’s some fun hints at sexual and gender queerness in a scene where the sentient beings question whether this influencer couple is indeed their best representation. I wish more time was spent on this moment and with an expansiveness of physical self akin to their internal explorations. While not without its imperfects, Love Me shows what’s possible when sci-fi focuses on character, performance, and ideas over big budget effects and non-stop action.

Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun in Love Me

Sue Bird: In the Clutch (dir. Sarah Dowland)

The most interesting aspect of this documentary portrait of the famous basketball player is that it’s unafraid to be, well, uninteresting. While it touches upon her parents’ divorce, her injuries, and some tough losses, there isn’t much story in this story. Based on this film, Sue Bird seems to be just a really incredible athlete who worked really hard throughout her career. The makings of an Oscar-winning biopic this is not.

But plenty of male athletes have received documentaries simply for being great at their sport. And it’s enjoyable to watch what ultimately amounts to a highlight reel for Bird with commentary from herself and the people in her life.

The film also takes time to show how women’s sports have changed since Bird began. From minimal press attention to bringing Nick Carter to the ESPY’s as a beard to playing overseas, through Bird the film shows how things have improved and how there’s still a long way to go.

For many, the real draw of the film are the cute little moments captured between Bird and Megan Rapinoe. The two of them recount their first meeting at the Rio Olympics, but even better than the polished montage of their relationship are the glimpses of their relationship throughout. It’s very cute!

Power (dir. Yance Ford)

Read full review.

Dìdi (弟弟) (dir. Sean Wang)

Recently nominated for the Best Documentary Short Oscar, filmmaker Sean Wang’s debut feature thrives on its specificity. Yes, this is a coming-of-age movie that follows familiar beats. It still feels wholly unique because it’s specifically set in the summer of 2008 and specifically takes place in Northern California. It specifically focuses on a Taiwanese American boy who is a younger sibling and has an artist mother and a mostly absent father. It’s specifically about Chris Wang.

Each facet of Chris and Chris’ life is explored with an eye for detail. The 2008 setting doesn’t merely evoke nostalgia — it allows for a nuanced examination of how racism and pressures of masculinity manifested at that time and in this place. It has the cringe-filled moments of humor and the tender moments of emotion one might expect from the genre, but here it’s all servicing several ideas and experience often under-explored, or, at least, rarely explored this well.

Izaac Wang as Chris, Joan Chen as his mother, and Shirley Chen as his sister all give deeply felt performances, capturing the fraught bonds and inherent intimacies of a family. Every year there are wonderful coming-of-age movies made about women and queer people — this is the smartest and most effective straight boy coming-of-age movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Never Look Away (dir. Lucy Lawless)

Lucy Lawless begins her directorial debut about war photographer Margaret Moth by centering Moth’s longtime lover who she began dating when she was 30 and he was only 17. That man recounts their meeting and how Moth upended — and derailed — his life with her furious hunger for pleasure and control.

It’s a bold choice in a documentary that’s ultimately rather celebratory. But it reveals Lawless’ willingness as a filmmaker to capture her subject in full. To celebrate Moth’s unique personality and accomplishments is not dependent on smoothing over her complications.

Lawless takes this same approach in covering the many wars, conflicts, and genocides, Moth captured throughout her career. There’s a matter-of-factness in the interviews and recollections of these moments of recent history. It’s an approach worthy of its subject who seems to have had both a deeply felt compassion for humanity and a deep disdain for its cruelty. And it’s an ethical necessity at a time when similar atrocities — or, in the case of Israel’s violence toward civilians and journalists, the same atrocities — continue today.

As one interviewee states, if something is not recorded it will never change. If something is recorded it also might not change. This documentary records Moth and the violence she encountered. It might do nothing. It’s still important to look.

Stress Positions (dir. Theda Hammel)

Read full review.

Layla (dir. Amrou Al-Kadhi)

While recent years have brought an influx of movies about drag performers, this is the first I’ve seen where the performers lament having to work brunches and corporate events. It’s the understanding of the lived experience of drag as a job that allows the world of Layla to feel lived in and real.

Amrou Al-Kadhi’s debut feature is constructed like a romcom. Their titular protagonist meets a white normie at one of the above mentioned corporate events and after a night of partying they begin to date. Unfortunately, from the beginning it’s clear this pair isn’t going to work. It’s not just their differences in race and class and queerness, there’s also a lack of true connection. Their relationship is built entirely on projections.

Ultimately, this is not a romcom — it’s an indie dramedy. And, while there’s a lot of truth and care brought to the world of the film and to its themes, I wonder what it might’ve been like if more time was spent in Layla’s community and less with the doomed romance. Or if the lack of connection in the romance was withheld longer, so we, as an audience, could go on the same emotional journey as Layla.

But in a cinematic landscape where so many versions of this story are told poorly, Layla is a welcome respite. Like its protagonist, it may be imperfect, but it puts on quite a show.

Bilal Hasna in Layla

Grace (dir. Natalie Jasmine Harris) (short)

Read full review.

A Real Pain (dir. Jesse Eisenberg)

At Sundance 2022, Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut was one of my least favorite films, so what a nice surprise to see his voice grow into this lovely dramedy. Following cousins on a trip to Poland to visit their recently deceased Holocaust surviving grandma’s old home, Eisenberg has crafted a new take on the odd couple story. The cousins are perfectly written for Eisenberg and co-star Kieran Culkin and it’s so fun to watch them bounce off each other and the people around them.

Eisenberg’s previous film was invested in question of how to exist in the world with privilege. But where that film had a mean self-importance, this has a tender uncertainty. It’s a very Jewish film in the ways it asks questions without providing answers. It’s at once a Warsaw travelogue, a buddy comedy, and a meditation on how to live in our cruel world. With a balance of tones and an attention to character, Eisenberg has found his own worthy cinematic perspective.

Handling the Undead (dir. Thea Hvistendahl)

I love slow horror and this Danish zombie movie is definitely slow. The problem is the pace isn’t necessarily in service of anything all that interesting. The characters are thin and the thematic depth doesn’t go far beyond “the challenges of accepting death.”

But even if I found this film to be underwhelming, the craft on display is undeniable. It’s beautifully shot, well-acted, and has a gorgeous score. Director Thea Hvistendahl has a history in commercials and music videos and there are sequences within this feature that are stunning on their own. This is the kind of film that’s frustrating not because it’s bad, but because of how much talent is on display. This film’s unfulfilled potential has me interested to see what Hvistendahl does next.

Suncoast (dir. Laura Chinn)

With an unsubtle and inconsistent 2005 setting, a poorly structured and broadly written script, and an awkwardly apolitical point of view, Suncoast is the biggest disappointment of the festival.

This is a personal story for writer/director Laura Chinn and I appreciate her desire to tell a story close to her own adolescence. The most compelling part of the story — the young protagonist’s brother is in the same hospice facility as Terri Schiavo — is true to Chinn’s experience and it’s frustrating this unique experience is too often surrounded by stock characters, plot contrivances, and an overwrought approach to material that didn’t need artificial emotion.

There are debates to be had about the film’s focus on being the caregiver to someone sick and how it presents the Schiavo case, but frankly it isn’t strong enough on a fundamental level to argue about its politics. Nico Parker gives a great lead performance and Laura Linney and Woody Harrelson are reliably excellent (even if Harrelson’s character is a baffling addition to the story) — it’s not enough to salvage the script.

While it may still elicit tears due to its subject matter, Suncoast smooths out its emotion with an attempt at crowd-pleasing that only creates distance.

Nico Parker, Ella Anderson, Ariel Martin, and Daniella Taylor in Suncoast

Ponyboi (dir. Esteban Arango)

Read full review.

Good One (dir. India Donaldson)

A confident work of subtlety and truth, India Donaldson’s debut feature captures the unique experience of being gay and hanging out with your dad and his best friend.

17 year old Sam (a perfect Lily Collias) isn’t exactly excited to go on a hike/camping trip with her dad (James Le Gros). But it’s what he loves to do and it’s how they bond and it’s what’s expected of her. He has another young kid with his second wife and Sam seems to enjoy the time with her dad. Her dad’s best friend’s son is not as easy going — he opts out of the trip leaving Sam alone with the two men.

This isn’t a film of heightened drama, but of quiet betrayals. Over the course of a few days, Sam is confronted with the failures and continued failings of these adults. Good One is extremely specific to these characters and to the experience of being a young woman around old men and to the experience of being a queer young woman around old men. This film wasn’t labeled an “LGBTQ+ Story” by Sundance and that’s a real oversight — not only because Sam is explicitly queer, but because Sam’s queerness is deeply ingrained in the way her dad and his friend treat her and even more so in how she responds to them.

This one is for all the queer girls who were forced to parent their parents, who learned to out dad their dads.

Sundance 2024: “Ponyboi” Is a Crime Drama with Cowboys, Springsteen, and an Intersex Lead

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

The thing you need to know about Ponyboi is that it’s so fucking fun.

It’s true writer and star River Gallo has crafted a movie with intersex representation unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’s true there is an emotional arc of an intersex sex worker struggling to forgive his family for the surgeries forced upon him as a child. It’s true the film is filled with a range of violence and heartbreak.

But, my God, is this film FUN.

The brilliance of Ponyboi — an expansion of Gallo’s short film of the same name — is the way it wraps itself in both a romantic fantasy and a delicious crime story. You can see the beats one might expect from a Sundance film focusing on an underrepresented identity. But they’re presented with laughs and gasps and eroticism.

Ponyboi is about an intersex person named Ponyboi (Gallo) who works as a sex worker out of a laundromat owned by pimp/drug dealer Vinny (Dylan O’Brien). Vinny is about to have a baby with Ponyboi’s best friend Angel (Victoria Pedretti), but Vinny and Ponyboi are also fucking on the side. Vinny is trying to get Ponyboi to switch from testosterone to estrogen and to get his tits done — less because that’s something Ponyboi wants and more because it would be good for business.

On Valentine’s Day, Ponyboi’s melancholy life is upended when Vinny’s shitty latest batch gets them in trouble with some gangsters. Ponyboi wants to run away — possibly with sexy cowboy Bruce (Murray Bartlett) — but first he needs to refill his hormones. All before Vinny or the gangster catch up with him.

The genre conventions aren’t just a way to serve an ignorant audience intersex knowledge. Gallo, director Esteban Arango, and the entire cast are having a blast playing in this world. O’Brien is alternately hilarious and terrifying as a cliché Jersey boy and Pedretti is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking as a cliché Jersey girl. All the gangsters flounce around with the subtlety of a Tarantino movie. And Bartlett is a fantasy of masculinity come to life. All of these ingredients combine for a plot that may not be original outside of its lead, but does always remain tight and propulsive.

The first scene with Bartlett is especially wonderful as his cowboy Bruce and Ponyboi flirt over a shared Jersey love of Bruce Springsteen. Their duet of “I’m On Fire” that could have been trite, feels only hot and sweet with performers this talented.

There are multiple ways to read the reality of the action on-screen. I love that the film lives in the fantasy space without over-explaining. Is Bruce a fiction? Maybe. Is he any more fictional than the crime plot of Ponyboi’s life? Not really. Are these genre conventions any more absurd than the horror movie of operating on children to conform their bodies to socially constructed ideas of gender? No.

Reminiscent of the Wachowskis’ Bound, Ponyboi is a queer cinema genre pastiche that understands a movie can be artful, emotional, and incredibly entertaining.

My only complaint is that Springsteen’s “Pony Boy” doesn’t play over the end credits. But that’s okay — “I’m On Fire” is better anyway.

Ponyboi is streaming for the rest of the day on the Sundance virtual platform.

Sundance 2024: “Grace” Is a Beautifully Constructed Black Queer Short

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

The most beautifully shot film at Sundance 2024 isn’t any of the buzzed about features that will sell for millions — it’s Natalie Jasmine Harris’ short film, Grace.

It’s not just that the photography is pretty — although it certainly is — it’s that every moment is captured exactly as it should be. The camera is stationary when it should be. The camera is handheld when it should be. Close-ups and wide shots are used to great effect.

I’m a big proponent of shooting on film, but it’s only worth it when the entire visual approach is motivated by character and story. It’s more than worth it here.

Grace is about a 16 year old girl named Grace in the rural 1950s South. She’s spent the summer getting close to another girl — all the excitement, uncertainty, and intimacy of young queer love — but, as she prepares to be baptized, she questions whether she needs to repent for her feelings.

Harris, whose previous film Pure was one of my favorite shorts at Newfest 2021, trusts in her craft. Many shorts feel the need to have an obvious hook or an easy twist — or are obvious samples from an already written feature — but Grace is a simple moment in time enriched by a depth of feeling. The attention to detail in everything from production design to performance allows the film to stand as a contained work of art. It washes over you during its ten minute runtime like the sea washes over its protagonist at the film’s end. A mix of heartbreak and beauty.

Cinematographer Tehillah De Castro previously shot Tahara and How to Blow Up a Pipeline, so it was not surprising to see her name appear in the credits. She’s one of the best cinematographers working today. Not one of the best up-and-coming, not one of the best at shooting indie queer movies — one of the best period.

Harris’ excellent taste in collaborators doesn’t end with her DP. Again, the production design, editing, and performances are all exquisite, and everything is brought together by a gorgeous score from Taul Katz and Damsel Elysium.

When people lament the amount of lesbian period pieces, I think they’re actually complaining about a predictability. It’s not the period setting — it’s the sameness of stories and the sameness of who’s on screen.

Grace may work as a contained short, but I hope someday soon Natalie Jasmine Harris gets to make a feature length period piece. If this is what she can do in a ten minute Kickstarter-funded short, I can’t even imagine what she’ll conjure with more time and a bigger budget. I hope we’re lucky enough to find out.

Grace is now streaming as part of Short Film Program 5 on the Sundance virtual platform.

Sundance 2024: “Stress Positions” Is a Queer Farce With Bite and Depth

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

The two narrators in Theda Hammel’s debut feature Stress Positions each speak with the syntax of literary fiction. No one has told them they’re in a farce.

Whether literally or figuratively, everyone in this film is better at writing than they are at living. Or, maybe, we’ve become a world better at writing aka storytelling aka narrativizing than we are at living. Or, maybe, it’s absurd to make generalizations about our entire world based on a handful of toxic queers living in Brooklyn.

Stress Positions is about Terry Goon (John Early), a washed up party gay whose rich older husband has left him for an even younger man. It’s also about Terry’s 19 year old Moroccan American nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash) who is a model and is living in Terry’s (his husband’s) ramshackle brownstone because he is “very injured.” (He has a broken leg.) And, finally, it’s about Karla (Hammel), a bisexual (self-identified lesbian) trans woman in a relationship with a cis lesbian (Amy Zimmer) who wrote a successful book about her transition.

The film is bookended by narration from Karla, but it’s Bahlul we hear from most throughout. He’s pivoting from model to writer and we hear snippets from his life story that he’s jotting down in a little notebook. Is your life so interesting? Karla questions before informing Bahlul that fiction is freedom.

Is transness a sort of fiction? Does that make it untrue? “I wanted to kill myself and this sort of helped,” Karla states with the sardonic edge she delivers many of the film’s best one-liners. What kind of escape can the reinvention of transition provide? What will fall short?

For a film that is laugh-out-loud hilarious from beginning to end, there’s a lot of thematic density here. The satire of ignorant privileged Brooklynites is there for laughs, but underneath these (well-executed) easy jokes is something grander about the disconnect between people. And not just because it takes place in the summer of 2020.

Bahlul’s (white) mom raised him to believe his uncle Terry was evil. It’s fascinating to watch him discover the truth to be far less grand and far more pathetic — but maybe just as sinister. If being queer does not grant us a unique immorality or a unique moral superiority — if these are just stories people tell about us and we tell ourselves — then where does that leave us? To abandon the fictions is to confront the minutiae of our feelings and failures, to face the feelings and failures of the world around us.

For the characters in Stress Positions, the fiction of queerness (and even the fiction of nonfiction) are attempts to keep the world theoretical. Karla’s story is that she’s a lesbian — even if she lusts after just about every eligible boy she meets. How one labels their own sexuality doesn’t matter. But some of Karla’s self-narrativizing is not as harmless.

Ultimately, the way these characters engage with the world and their world is as performative as Terry disinfecting his food deliveries. He thinks it’s keeping him safe, but many of our greatest fictions are ones we believe ourselves to be fact.

Don’t let all my pondering mislead you. Again, this is a very funny movie. Most post-Old Hollywood American farce is a pastiche of that era. It’s thrilling to get a film that understands what made the comedy in those films work while discovering something wholly its own. The privileged Brooklyn setting may have people recalling mumblecore and its off-shoots, but this is far broader and far smarter than that. If anything it recalls early Almodòvar in its filtering of the genre through a new lens.

Since seeing Theda Hammel in her production of Wallace Shawn’s Marie and Bruce, it’s been clear she would approach the path of being a “Trans Artist” in a way uniquely her own. This film does not disappoint. It’s the clear work of a trans auteur, a writer/director/actor/composer who understands it’s as important to take formal risks as it is to entertain.

Fiction may be freedom, but not all fiction is free. Stress Positions is free.

Stress Positions is now streaming on the Sundance virtual platform.

Sundance 2024: “Power” Is an Effective Introduction to the Violent History of American Policing

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

During the first moments of his documentary on the history of American policing, director Yance Ford (Strong Island) asks the audience for curiosity or, at least, suspicion. Then he concedes it’s up to each individual viewer to abide by this request.

Through talking head interviews, archival footage, on the ground interviews, and narration, Power lays out a clear timeline of the police from their origins to the present. It begins with slave patrols, militias tasked with stealing Indigenous land, and officers maintaining order among the working class. It then moves into the first official police forces in major cities, the blurring of police and military, the violence against social and class movements, the War on Drugs, Stop and Frisk, and the failure of diversified law enforcement.

Most of this information will be repetitive for anyone interested in the topic, but, as a Netflix documentary under 90 minutes, this is a film with a clearly defined audience. It is meant to be an introduction — a teaching tool ideal for classrooms or for adults open to change.

While Ford pointedly pulls back from showing certain footage in full, there are still a lot of upsetting images included. But if these images were enough to move those with privilege out of complacency, the abuses of the police would have ended long ago. And so it’s not the emotional plea that’s essential here — it’s the intellectual one.

Despite the short runtime, Ford is thorough in providing American Policing 101 alongside a primer on the way race manifests in this country and how that has developed — and developed alongside policing — over time.

One of Ford’s most compelling archival finds is a documentary from 1970 narrated by actor Ben Gazzara. It’s fascinating to see how policing was discussed over half a century ago and to witness the fundamental fallacies pumped into our culture about policing even then.

A section on the Kerner Commission that shows sympathetic white people passing the report out to other white people to try and change minds is harrowing in its familiarity. The government response to this report was to increase police funding. The government response to the 2020 protests was the same.

Ford includes a montage of almost every president since Lyndon B. Johnson bragging about their increase in police funding. It’s these repetitions, these cycles, that hit hardest. It’s not cynicism — it’s just reality. As journalist Wesley Lowery states, American policing has conceded nothing. They’ve doubled and tripled down on their power.

Understanding the police as a tool of racial and class subjugation and seeing how that has functioned in the U.S. and abroad — one interviewee notes that, yes, the police have been militarized, but also the military has been policified — is essential in fighting back in the present and in the future.

I’m glad this film exists as it’s easier to point people toward a short Netflix documentary than it is to get people to read a book. But the film does an excellent job showing how different groups have not only assimilated into whiteness but assimilated into American policing. I’m not sure if the problem is a lack of education about the police or a lack of will among those with any power to destroy these systems.

Those with the most power will never concede it. Many with even less won’t concede either. And so we return to Ford’s initial request. Are enough people willing to consider this history with curiosity and suspicion? How large of a majority is needed to fight the powerful minority that grants these individuals their violence? This film does not have the answers. But it prompts more people to start asking questions.

Power documentary will stream on Netflix later this year. 

Sundance 2024: “Desire Lines” Is an Experimental Documentary About Transmascs Who F*ck Men

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

Watching Jules Rosskam’s experimental documentary, Desire Lines, I had to remember there was a time I didn’t know trans people could be gay.

It feels absurd now. While I certainly know some straight trans people, the vast majority aren’t just queer, they make dyketactics or faggotry — or both! — their entire personality. But, once upon a time, I questioned my own ability to be trans, because I had only dated women and my understanding of transness was still shaped by the theories of 20th century pioneering cishet doctor Harry Benjamin.

Desire Lines is about Ahmad (Aden Hakimi), an Iranian American trans man, embarking on his own queer journey through gay and trans history. He arrives in a liminal space of an archive run by a transmasc named Kieran (Theo Germaine) — an archive that literally transforms into the past taking Ahmad from looking at a photograph to suddenly being in a bathhouse.

Ahmad is learning about the history of cis gay men and the history of transmasculine people who fuck cis gay men and figuring out where he fits in. As he researches — and time travels — the film embraces more conventional tools of documentary like archival footage and interviews with a wide variety of queer transmasculine people.

Of course, Lou Sullivan is a major part of Ahmad’s journey and the film’s archival footage. And while there may be nothing new in this inclusion for trans people who have been out for a while, it’s worth noting that the only documentaries that exist about Sullivan are still the two shorts by Rhys Ernst (watch here and here). He may be famous in the community, but he’s not famous in the world at large — which means he’s not famous for trans people who are either new to their transness or new to that part of trans history.

Many of the interviews feel similar. Not much in Desire Lines hasn’t already been said at many trans hangouts. And yet, there’s still a value to having these varied experiences captured on-screen.

Ultimately, that’s what the film is about: the importance and magic of an archive. It’s about the experience of discovering there have always been others like you and the necessity to make this experience more accessible for all.

For queer trans guys who are not in community with other queer trans guys, I can imagine there will be an immense comfort in hearing such a vast range of relationships to one’s genitalia, to the types of sex one has, to what words are used during sex, and to who people have sex with. It can be a cinematic version of that first trans party you attend when you learn not only are you not alone, but you’re actually kind of cliché.

And for trans people who are not in need of this education, there’s still something touching about witnessing a character go on this journey. The dreamy sequences that take place in the past are lovely, especially an erotic moment between the two lead actors in a recreated bathhouse.

To be trans is to constantly be discovered. Every decade cis people act as if we’re new and every year a trans person invents themself and finds our history. The longer I’m out — approaching seven years — the more exhausted I am by the former and the more heartened I am by the latter. Every newly out trans person deserves a Kieran guiding them through the archive.

At least, until there are enough Kierans and enough Ahmads to change the world and this history is known to all.

Desire Lines is streaming on the Sundance virtual platform January 25-28.

Oscar Nominations 2024: From “Barbie” to Lily Gladstone, the Full List of Nominees

Oscar Nominations 2024 feature image from Killers of the Flower Moon

Attention Awards gays! The nominations for the 96th Academy Awards have arrived! Oppenheimer leads with 13 nods, but there are plenty of other movies to be excited about. Killers of the Flower Moon received 9 nods — most notably for queer actor Lily Gladstone in the Best Actress category. And, of course, possible heterosexual satire and definite box office hit Barbie secured 8 nominations despite being left out of the Best Actress and Best Director category.

Annette Bening and Jodie Foster were both nominated in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively for NYAD. And Foster makes history along with Colman Domingo for Rustin as two out actors playing out characters to be nominated.

I’m also very excited Anatomy of a Fall, a masterful film with a bisexual protagonist, managed to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Editing. It’s joined by The Zone of Interest in proving that Parasite‘s 2020 win was not a fluke and the Oscars are slowly becoming a more international award show.

With a delayed Emmys and the Grammys in just a couple weeks, this awards season has been even more saturated than usual. But this is the Oscars! No matter how much I try to ignore it, I still get excited by the glamour, the film history, and the possibility of some deserving artists — even some deserving queer artists! — potentially having their work recognized. And, hey, if awards aren’t your thing, you can check out a bunch of great queer movies that weren’t nominated instead.

Full List of 2024 Oscar Nominations

Best Picture

American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Best Director

Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

Best Actress

Annette Bening, NYAD
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Best Supporting  Actress

Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, NYAD
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best Supporting Actor

Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Best Original Screenplay

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December
Past Lives

Best Adapted Screenplay

American Fiction
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Best Animated Feature

The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best International Feature

Io Capitano
Perfect Days
Society of the Snow
The Teachers’ Lounge
The Zone of Interest

Best Documentary Feature

Bobi Wine: The People’s President
The Eternal Memory
Four Daughters
To Kill a Tiger
20 Days in Mariupole

Best Film Editing

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Cinematography

El Conde
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Sound

The Creator
Maestro
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest

Best Production Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Visual Effects

The Creator
Godzilla Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning
Napoleon

Best Costume Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Golda
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Society of the Snow

Best Original Score

American Fiction
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Best Original Song

“The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot
“I’m Just Ken” from Barbie
“It Never Went Away” from American Symphony
“Wahzhazhe” from Killers of the Flower Moon
“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

Best Documentary Short Subject

The ABCs of Book Banning
The Barber of Little Rock
Island in Between
The Last Repair Shop
Nai Nai & Wai Po

Best Animated Short Film

Letter to a Pig
Ninety-Five Senses
Our Uniform
Pachyderme
War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko

Best Live Action Short Film

The After
Invincible
Knight of Fortune
Red, White and Blue
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Watch the 96th Academy Awards on March 10 at 7pm EST/4pm PST airing on ABC.

Sundance 2024: “In the Summers” Is a Different Kind of Queer Coming-of-Age Story

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

Vicente is in his car outside the small airport of Las Cruces, New Mexico waiting for his kids. He’s nervous. His hands are shaking. He smokes to calm himself or just to have something to do. The flight attendant exits the airport with his two kids, tomboy Violeta and girly Eva, and he does his best to shift into father mode.

The movie shifts too. This opening moment is one of the few we’re with Vicente, the rest alternating between Violeta and Eva. This brief glimpse will endear us to him even as he hurts his kids. We’ll know he cares. We’ll know he’s trying his best. But it doesn’t ease the hurt. It might even make it worse.

Alessandra Lacorazza’s debut feature, In the Summers, is split into four sections, four summers where Vicente’s kids visit from California. The film spans over a decade as Violeta and Eva are played by three different actors.

Even as a child, it’s obvious Violeta is queer. But her dynamic with her father and her sister and the rest of the world is as complicated as queer existence often is in life. Vicente has a respect for Violeta, a clear favoritism built on their shared masculinity — even though he still has homophobic outbursts. It’s Eva who faces the most rejection from her father, even as it’s Eva who is most desperate for his love.

It’s also not as simple as Violeta being masculine and Eva being feminine. Especially as they get older, those lines are blurred as Eva evolves into her own kind of tomboy. Violeta is more emotional while Eva is hardened. Eva skateboards and excels at pool and both Violeta and Eva attach to local dyke bartender Carmen.

The greatest strength of In the Summers are these well-written, realistic, complicated characters and watching how the change — or don’t — and how their relationships change — or don’t — over time. Lacorazza’s sharp writing is paired with several excellent performances including Réné Pérez Joglar (aka rapper Residente) as Vicente, Emma Ramos as Carmen, Leslie Grace as Vicente’s girlfriend Yenny, and Lío Mehiel and Sasha Calle as the eldest versions of Violeta and Eva.

But it’s the middle versions of Violeta and Eva who are the heart of the film — old enough to be fully aware, young enough to leave down some of their defenses. Allison Salinas and Kimaya Thais give phenomenal performances that are a testament to their burgeoning talents and Lacorazza’s talent as a director.

Each part opens with a video still life marking the next chapter. It’s a nice cinematic flourish and I wish the film had more like it. In the Summers is at its best when it supports its writing and performances with a clear form — a sweaty party in shallow focus, an accident lost in darkness. Too often the film falls back on a flat naturalism that doesn’t quite fit with its snapshot memory structure.

Nevertheless, this is a film that prioritizes character and that is where it excels. Watching Mehiel and Calle synthesize Violeta and Eva’s childhoods into their adult selves recalled the last chapter of Moonlight — pretty much the highest compliment I can give.

When we leave Violeta and Eva they’re in their early 20s, still so young. They each have so much growth left to stumble through, so many more chapters to live. In the Summers is a queer coming-of-age movie that understands childhood and adolescence are just the beginning — our memories shape us for the rest of our lives.

In the Summers is streaming on the Sundance virtual platform January 25-28.

Sundance 2024: “Sebastian” Fails in Its Self-Critique of a Gay Sex Work Story

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

Even Max’s publisher is disappointed to hear he’s writing about sex work. It is kind of a “stock character of queer literature,” he sheepishly admits.

But he promises he’s bringing something new, a modern day story of sex work in the internet age where his protagonist will be without shame. This is the part he shares. The part he doesn’t share is that he himself has become a sex worker as research.

Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian first appears to have some self-awareness around its protagonist. His love of Bret Easton Ellis, his angst around only having a short story collection published by 25, his empty espousing of literary theory. But Mäkelä is either too fond of Max or relates too closely to Max to give his film the bite it requires. Instead it ends up with the same flaws as the character at its center.

Despite what Max claims, sex work in the internet age has been plenty explored on the page and on-screen. In fact, every year I’ve covered Sundance, there has been at least one film — from Pleasure to Work to Good Luck to You, Leo Grande to The Stroll and Kokomo City. A common profession, and a common day job among artists, there’s plenty of room for more movies about sex work. But sex work as a topic is not enough to make a story interesting.

Max, the tourist sex worker, is not the only stock character on display. There’s the pathetic man, the mean man, the man who surprises Max with group sex, and the man who develops a tender relationship with Max, because he reminds the man of his deceased partner. These figures may be tropes for a reason, but Max is too enamored with these boring characters as interesting material. Not only is he new to sex work, he appears new to stories about sex work.

The ease of Max entering this profession only faces one hiccup — a prospective client who rejects Max upon seeing a face pic. There’s something interesting — and funny! — about Max’s entitlement and self-esteem being undermined by someone suggesting he isn’t hot enough to be charging 200 pounds. Unfortunately, Max starts working out more and this thread is dropped with him quickly returning to high demand.

It’s not just that the film fails to reinvent its trope-filled story. There are also inconsistencies in Max as a character. He’s framed as ambitious and eager, but then he falters in his culture writing day job and in an important literary space. Of course, an ambitious person can still self-sabotage. Unfortunately, here it feels less like character nuance and more like plot convenience. This was a story that needed the bite of a filmmaker like Fassbinder or, for a more recent example, Ira Sachs’ Passages. Instead Max experiences the same gentle treatment from Mäkelä as his privilege allows him to receive in publishing.

The film is well-made and well-acted with a strong central performance from Ruaridh Mollica as Max and a standout performance from Jonathan Hyde doing a lot with a lot as one of the clients. I just wish the acting and craft were servicing a story that had more to say about sex, sex work, and the literary world.

Sebastian circles around the idea that to be a successful sex worker or a successful author in the internet age, you have to put forth a persona on social media. Alas with Max a luddite averse to even being on Instagram, this feels more like a slipped in gripe rather than a central thread.

Who has the right to tell which stories? How important is persona to an artist’s success? How has the internet changed all of our various economies? These are all questions I care about and find worthy of exploration. Instead Sebastian gets distracted by a middling version of a story almost as old as its protagonist’s new profession.

Sebastian is streaming on the Sundance virtual platform January 25-28.

Sundance 2024: “Frida” Documentary Lets the Queer Disabled Communist Speak

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

In Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, her protagonist explains why she had to write a corrective biography of her enigmatic artist wife: “Now that Mr. Smith’s false narrative was out there and I was in our cabin alone, I had nothing to do but avenge him and his lies, to avenge reality itself, to avenge everything.”

I thought of this explanation while watching Carla Gutierrez’s documentary, “Frida,” a work that aims to tell the life story of one of the twentieth century’s most famous artists in her own words. With another feature documentary already released in 2020, a docuseries released just last year, and, of course, the 2002 Oscar-winning biopic starring Salma Hayek, it’s fair to question if we really needed another documentary about Frida Kahlo. But every life — like every story — can be altered by its framing. And Gutierrez’s reframe is one worthy of existence.

Using Kahlo’s own words from diaries, letters, interviews, and other writings, Frida has the artist narrate her own life along with the words of friends and lovers including two-time husband Diego Rivera. (All performed by actors, of course.)

The lack of talking heads is supplemented by visuals consisting of photographs, archival footage, and animated renditions of Kahlo’s paintings. While the animation is well-done, there is something that feels counter to the film’s perspective to manipulate Kahlo’s art rather than simply portraying it. Watching the film, I yearned for a more radical approach that allowed for stillness as we listened to the voices.

But the words themselves are excellent. Due to her self-portraiture and her tokenization as one of the few women allowed into the canon, Frida Kahlo the person is often flattened. Not here. The film displays her intelligence and poetic voice, as well as her day-to-day frustrations as person and as an artist — a woman artist in a male world, a Mexican artist in the US and France. She’s vivacious and despairing and annoyed and bored. The film doesn’t force her to always be Frida Kahlo, famous artist. She’s allowed to just be Frida.

And who is Frida? Gutierrez doesn’t shy away from her queerness — with sexuality or gender — nor does she reduce her communism to a brief mention. A lot of time is also spent on the accident that caused her to live with chronic pain. It’s not framed as inspirational or depressing — it just is. Every aspect of Kahlo’s life and worldview and art was shaped by being a queer disabled communist.

The best parts of the documentary focus on Kahlo’s time in the US and France, allowing her to express the absolute disdain she felt for the bourgeoisie and the rich. There’s an understanding that these spaces are required for success in the arts while also a relatable exhaustion at this requirement. French surrealist André Breton is not credited with “discovering” Frida’s work, but rather lambasted for displaying her art alongside random Mexican trinkets — as if her worth as an artist was dependent on her ethnicity as curio.

Centering her voice is also valuable in portraying her illness. There are moments of immense grief — especially related to her miscarriage — but mostly there is just the mundane frustrations of living with chronic pain.

And, finally, this approach is divine when Kahlo — and her lovers — are discussing sex. “It’s good to have sex even when one is not in love,” Kahlo says before detailing the sensitivity of her breasts. It’s delicious to hear about her many affairs with men and women from her own voice and from theirs.

Every year at Sundance, there are a handful of portrait documentaries that were either produced by or are quickly bought by major streamers. Many of these are straight forward portraits unworthy of their fascinating subjects. While Frida may be imperfect, I admire its ambition and its less conventional approach to form. I also admire its commitment to portraying a version of Kahlo more controversial than her iconography.

If she’s going to be one of the famous women in history, she should be famous as queer, as disabled, and as a loud and proud communist. That is the biography Frida Kahlo deserves.

Frida is streaming on the Sundance virtual platform January 25-28.

Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: The Sex in “Bound” Changed Our Lives

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. Today, Drew and Kayla discuss the brain chemistry altering sex of Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Bound.

Kayla: Okay, hello, ready to talk Bound whenever you are, which is also an evergreen statement.

Drew: Lololol I am READY. I rewatched the scenes on my big TV, because for some reason it’s no longer streaming anywhere for free, but I DO own the Blu-Ray.

Kayla: I had to rewatch the scenes on a porn site for this same reason. Bound should really be easier to stream!

Okay, before we launch into discussing the film itself, I do want to share a quick story about meeting Lilly Wachowski this past summer. I met her at the after party for the Lambda Literary Awards. I wasn’t going to go up to her at first, and then I was like, wait, this is ridiculous, we’re in a room with a bunch of queer and trans writers, this is a perfect environment in which to approach her. So I did, and I don’t usually get starstruck or nervous in these situations, but I was! So I proceeded to basically thank her for…everything she has ever made…by title…I sounded like I was reading her imdb page.

Drew: Well, it’s a very good IMDb page.

Kayla: It IS! And amid my embarrassing rambling, I also managed to get out that Bound and Sense8 have some of the best queer sex scenes of all time.

Drew: They’re kind of another level tbh.

Kayla: They really are! They set a really high bar for queer art and erotic queer art.

Drew: And while it’s not explicitly queer and not as incredible the sex scene in Matrix Reloaded was the first sex scene I EVER SAW. I think we discussed this when we wrote about Resurrections, but my friend Josh had to fast forward through it for my parents to let me watch. But I still saw it. Just fast.

Kayla: YES, we are very much on the record about that Matrix sex scene being formative.

On that note, I’d love to know what your first experience of watching Bound was. Mine is…very specific and I want to hear yours first.

Drew: I have checked my records, and it appears I saw it for the first time in early 2016. I came out in May of 2017 and I sometimes forget how much queer art I experienced for the first time in the two years prior. Unsurprisingly, I was exploring my gender and sexuality with my movie watching before I realized I was doing it in my life.

Kayla: That makes total sense: gravitating toward certain art without quite knowing why just yet. I actually watched it just one literal year before you and around one to two years after you in terms of where I was in my coming out process. I was out, but it was pretty recent, and I was still very new to lesbian art.

Drew: Did it blow your mind?

Kayla: It really, truly did. I don’t get shy or embarrassed in this specific way anymore, but I was shy and embarrassed about watching it with other people! I felt like we were watching porn together, and I still had enough queer shame at the time to feel uncomfortable. But at the same time really giddy and delighted? It was an avalanche of emotions.

I’ll set the scene: The year is 2015. I’m living in Chicago. I’ve barely been out. I haven’t had any relationships other than a few “secret” ones with girls I met online that weren’t nearly as serious as I pretended they were. I’m living with two friends who are dating at the time, and I sleep on the futon in their living room because they’re letting me live there for free while I get my life together. One of these friends, Melanie, and I go through a phase where we’re just starting podcasts all the time…but not releasing them. I don’t know how to explain this any other way other than it was Chicago in 2015 and everyone was making podcasts. But hilariously, we were truly just making them and not releasing them.

There may have been a little bit of practicality to it; I think Melanie was working on her audio production skills. But mostly we were just in our early twenties and having a lot of fun making art that was just for us and not necessarily for consumption outside of our friend group.

Among these podcast concepts was one called Talk Jenny To Me. The concept was that we would watch a film starring a famous Jennifer (any famous Jennifer!) that at least one or both of us had never seen before and record live commentary tracks while watching. Bound was one of our picks for Jennifer Tilly. I had never seen it before! I had to react in real time to the film, out loud, in the company of friends. And I was basically losing my mind because it was so horny. I think the recording is lost forever, but somewhere out in the wasteland world of information data, there exists a recording of barely out me reacting to Bound in real time for the first time.

(Also, hi Melanie, who I know will read this, because she has a Google news alert set up for my name so she can stay up to date on my life/work.)

Drew: TALK JENNY TO ME. Wow I am so sad you don’t have that recording.

Kayla: When we talk about lost queer art, this is what we’re talking about.

Drew: It belongs in the lesbian herstory archive

Kayla: Archival work is soooo important. I’m sure most of the recording is just me going “oh my god” a lot.

Drew: I’m sure I was also uncomfortable watching it, because I had a whole complex about being turned on by lesbian sex “as a boy.” As a teenager, I only watched lesbian porn, but then I discovered feminism(?) in college and became very self-conscious of being perverted in any way. So I probably watched it while attempting to very clinically be like “ah yes the camerawork here really emphasizes the character development.”

This is also why I don’t get all that concerned about “Gen Z hates sex” discourse. Is it a generation thing or is it literally so many of us were uncomfortable with sex in our teens and early twenties??

Kayla: Right, I wasn’t really out here championing sex scenes publicly when I was younger, even if I did rewatch that Matrix scene over and over.

Drew: Once I came out, that pretense went away and while I can acknowledge the very good camerawork I also allow myself to hoot and holler and awooga. Especially when I rewatched during early pandemic and hadn’t had sex in like nine months.

Kayla: I do think I watched Bound at the perfect time. As mired in queer shame as I was at the time, I really do credit it with challenging and undoing some of that! And I think if it had come any sooner, I may not have been receptive to that.

Drew: That makes a lot of sense!

Kayla: It’s SO HOT; I’m not surprised about your awooga reactions early pandemic. And this is such a simple observation, but so much of why it’s hot for me has to do with how much agency both characters have, how it just sort of bucks in the face of a lot of standard or expected scripts for interactions, especially in a butch/femme dynamic. It also has to do with all the hands in mouths happening.

Drew: Yeah, we are also on the record about our oral fixations. And BOTH scenes — though they’re kind of two parts of one scene — have each character with the other’s finger in their mouth.

Kayla: I love cinematic symmetry.

Drew: You’re right about agency. I love the exchange: “I’m trying to seduce you.” “Why?” “Because I want to.”

I also like how Corky has this grin where she kind of knows she might be being played but also thinks it’s worth it

Kayla: Yes! Violet’s in control, but so is Corky. They’re both giving up and taking.

I love how that scene starts too, with Violet showing Corky her tattoo and talking about how long it took and the pain she felt after is something I love about it. That feels really specific and queer, this idea of an ache, which can feel like a memory but also a want. I’m going to be corny/cringe and quote my fiancée, but when Kristen Arnett wrote “When I write sex scenes, the ache is just as important as the orgasm,” in Vulture, I FELT THAT.

Drew: Oooo what a quote. It’s also really felt to me in that close up of their lips as they talk to each other all breathy. The ache of desire about to be fulfilled.

Kayla: I mean, Jennifer Tilly has one of the most identifiable voices in cinema, and there’s something about it that really works so well in these scenes. No one else sounds like that, and there’s something erotic about that singularity in and of itself to me.

Drew: Yes! I like that the dialogue itself is kind of porn-y, but it’s so beautifully shot and well-acted it works. Also because porn-y dialogue CAN work? Porn is often an accusation thrown at non-porn films to show they’re inferior but… what’s wrong with porn? We’re talking about queer art, we’re not arguing in front of Congress.

Kayla: Totally! I hate when porn-y is used as a way to insult art. It’s a compliment lol! Because to be honest, I actually usually find a lot of dialogue during sex scenes in films to be less realistic than dialogue in porn, because at least for me, sex talk in real life tends to be pretty simple and straightforward the way it’s presented in porn and not…trying to do all that, the way it sometimes functions in film.

Drew: Right and also there can be a sort of role play to sex even when not specifically doing a scene.

Drew: There are some other specific moments in the scenes I want to zero in on. Like when Violet says “You can’t believe what you see but you can believe what you feel” and puts Corky’s hand on her pussy to show how wet she is. LIKE!

Kayla: THAT! PART!!!!!! I was like oh this is a sex scene that fucks, which you know, is not always the case!

Drew: It’s not! We should note that famously the Wachowskis brought on Susie Bright to be lesbian sexpert. Only closeted trans women would be like “we don’t know enough about lesbian sex.” All the male directors in film history are like idk it’s four titties how complicated can it be.

Kayla: LOL.

Drew: Which, hey, is sometimes true.

Kayla: Have you ever seen the way the second scene is written in the script? I can’t remember which friend called my attention to it, but it’s incredible, practically poetry.

Drew: No!

Kayla: Here it is.

INT. CORKY’S APARTMENT – NIGHT
The sex.
There is nothing flower-scented or out-of-focus about it.
It is sweaty, slippery, body-grinding, bed-squeaking lesbian sex – –
Pungent and potent – –
And when it is over, neither woman can move.
Finally, Corky’s eyes flutter open.

Drew: !!! Wow. And it’s true! I love how Corky’s musculature is emphasized.

Kayla: I’ve never been able to get “pungent and potent” out of my head!!!! It’s so good!

Drew: And how sweaty they are in the scene.

Kayla: Yes, the sweat is so good. Whenever sweat is missing from very active sex scenes in film, I’m like are they fucking in the tundra?

Drew: Lmaooo. I also love how the bottom sheet has been ripped off Corky’s bed. That communicates so much.

Kayla: The after-sex glow is strong, too. You can tell the characters want to draw out this moment and sit with it longer, and we do too!!

Drew: Corky literally says I CAN SEE AGAIN.

Kayla: And I feel like that line can be read on multiple levels: the sex being completely mind altering/awakening but also just the idea of coming back into reality after being completely absorbed in the sex.

Drew: Ooo that’s true. I also like it as a sort of poetic declaration since Corky was so burned by her ex and she’s going to learn to trust Violet. She’s pulled out of isolation and toward new trust and new connection.

Kayla: Yeah, you can really see something shifting in this second scene (which I do agree is really just an extension of the first rather than something separate) for each of them and between them. Sometimes, sex scenes can just be sex, and that sex can still say something about the characters or the story or the context or the tone of a film, but here we do have a sex scene that is doing a lot at once. It’s a strong case for why sex scenes do belong in film and in queer art, even if I believe so strongly in that that I don’t think sex scenes should have to “prove” their value.

Drew: And closeted me was right: It’s so artfully shot! The transition from the car to the bed in a single move up is divine.

Kayla: I was literally going to say closeted you was sooooo right about the technical aspects of the scenes. On a craft level, they’re fantastic! Artful but still so natural.

Drew: The whole movie is playing with noir as a genre and the way the initial seduction occurs and even the lighting of the sex itself is a big part of that. The movie’s primary thematic statement is like: not all femmes are femme fatales! #notallfemmes

Kayla: Yes! It’s a really great example of how it’s actually quite easy to be subversive. That’s a straightforward subversion!

Drew: With Lilly Wachowski moving away from sci-fi, I’d be so interested to see her make something like this again. I love an operatic sci-fi spectacle, but a gritty grimy grounded action movie is great too.

Kayla: And there are still virtually no lesbian action movies of this nature in the time since Bound was made. Which is a personal affront to me.

Drew: Bound was so ahead of its time it would still be ahead of its time if it came out today.

Sundance 2024: “I Saw the TV Glow” Celebrates the People and Shows That Shape Us

Drew Burnett Gregory is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for her coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond. 

When I interviewed Jane Schoenbrun about their debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, they mentioned their next film was written during the early months of physical transition and would be “about the egg crack.” That film is I Saw the TV Glow and it’s a mix of styles, ideas, and emotions fitting for that chaotic moment in a trans person’s life.

I Saw the TV Glow is about Owen (Justice Smith) who we fall through time alongside from 7th grade (played then by Ian Foreman) until somewhere well into his adulthood. He’s a quiet kid who loves his mom and fears his dad. He doesn’t share the interests of his peers — except 9th grader Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) who loves a fantasy show called The Pink Opaque that Owen isn’t allowed to watch because it airs after his bedtime. Oh and because his dad says it’s a show for girls.

The Pink Opaque is an obvious stand-in for Buffy and Schoenbrun has a lot of fun recreating that era of teen fantasy show. Maddie educates Owen on “monsters of the week” and “big bads” and then begins slipping him VHS tapes so he can actually watch the episodes.

I Saw the TV Glow does for television and cool older girls (who might not be girls) what We’re All Going to the World’s Fair did for the internet and inappropriate adult men. The bond that forms between Owen and Maddie is deeply recognizable both in how tightly they connect and in the gaps they cannot fill.

By remaining truthful to the quiet awkwardness of many closeted trans girls, Schoenbrun has given themself a challenging task. Owen is fearful and self-conscious in ways that are pointedly alienating. After delivering the best line of the film, Justice Smith lets out his only laugh and one of his few smiles and it feels like a relief. That relief is quickly snatched away.

Because Owen — and, to an only slightly lesser extent, Maddie — are so internal, the film is at its best in its moments of quiet. The film’s masterful visuals, haunting sound design, poetic score, and cinematic flourishes combine to create moments that are transcendent. Schoenbrun confirms themself here as a singularly talented filmmaker unafraid to take risks — stylistically and emotionally.

But, from the beginning, the lines between Owen’s life and the world of The Pink Opaque are blurred. Schoenbrun allows characters to mimic the sort of overwrought dialogue and monologues found in Buffy and other teen shows. It’s fascinating to see this style used to represent trans teenagehood instead of Buffy’s cis girlhood, but it’s a choice I found myself admiring more than connecting with. Teenagers and newly out trans people both believe they’re discovering new ways of thinking and feeling that other people have been thinking and feeling for centuries. I experienced this myself and there’s a poignant nostalgia to seeing that represented on-screen — there’s also occasionally a distance.

Schoenbrun is currently working on an adaption of Imogen Binnie’s Nevada and it’s a fitting union of artist and material. Despite all the Buffy references, it’s that book that feels most closely tied to this film. Reading Nevada years into my transition — and after reading several books from trans authors inspired by Nevada — I felt grateful for its existence while experiencing a similar distance from the moment of transness it portrayed.

During that same interview, Schoenbrun told me they started working on We’re All Going to the World’s Fair before knowing they were trans, and they felt obligated to honor that uncertainty in the film itself. They’ve made a similar choice here — even though they were further into their transition during production and post-production, they honored the emotions of those early moments this film was written. There’s something quite vulnerable and quite rare about an artist trusting the person they were in the past. It’s easy for us — especially as trans people — to be so eager for the future that we ignore even the present. I love that Schoenbrun has resisted that temptation.

I Saw the TV Glow is about the art that shapes us, even if someday we grow beyond it. The film warns against looking at this art with dismissal or disdain. To do so is to look at our past selves with these same negative emotions. To do so is to deny our full personhood. To do so is to deny the tools we need to move confidently into the future.

I came to Buffy even later than I came to Nevada. But as a teenager, there was other art — good and bad — that shaped the woman I am today. And, next to me, also experiencing that art, was someone I thought was a girl — another queer human — who shaped me even more.

The two of us often sat side-by-side, staring at a screen, dreaming of the people we might someday become.

I Saw the TV Glow will be released by A24 later this year.