Arriving just in time for Pride Month, this film is, in many respects, a conventional coming-of-age story, yet it feels refreshing in the way it treats its teenage protagonist’s queer identity as completely natural.
The journey of *Girls Like Girls* from song to screen is unusual. In 2015, pop singer Hayley Kiyoko released her—extremely catchy—eponymous track, bringing an explicit declaration of lesbian desire ("girls like girls, like boys like girls") to a viral mainstream audience. It was accompanied by a music video that condensed the story of two suburban teens discovering their friendship was something more into just five minutes.
Director: Hayley Kiyoko
Writers: Hayley Kiyoko, Stefanie Scott, Chloe Okuno
Stars: Maya da Costa, Myra Molloy, Zach Braff
Co-directed by the singer herself, the video was artfully shot and empathetically told, captivating fans to the point where Kiyoko published a young adult novel expanding on the adventures of its young protagonists, Coley and Sonya. Now comes the *Girls Like Girls* film—a full decade after the song’s original release (an eternity in pop music terms)—yet it retains its freshness and its ability to disarm the viewer with its portrayal of queer self-discovery.
You don’t need to know this backstory—or anything about Kiyoko—to enjoy the artist’s feature directorial debut, a work steeped in the spirit of summer. The film tells an inevitably familiar story of first love, first heartbreak, and lessons learned, but it does so with such sincere emotional purity that everything feels new again. Or rather, it reminds you of when those feelings were new and overwhelmingly intense, no matter how much the adults—supposedly wiser—tried to convince you otherwise. The two magnificent young leads, Maya da Costa and Myra Molloy, deserve much of the credit for the film’s warm, intimate, and inviting tone, but so does Kiyoko; she reveals herself here as a filmmaker of remarkable talent and sensitivity, clearly capable of tackling projects beyond her own musical repertoire.
Kiyoko and co-writers Chloe Okuno (*Watcher*) and Stefanie Scott—who, interestingly, starred in the original music video—chose to set the story in the early 2000s. This choice not only taps into a certain millennial nostalgia (when apart, the characters communicate primarily via instant messaging on desktop computers rather than text messages) but, more importantly, illustrates just how much the visibility of queer youth has changed in recent decades. While it will appeal to young viewers who cannot imagine life without a smartphone, *Girls Like Girls* should also resonate with older LGBTQ audiences—those who grew up feeling isolated in their identities, lacking vocal peers or allies, and certainly without normalizing cultural touchstones like *Heartstopper*.
Yet, unusually, this is not primarily a coming-out story. Coley (da Costa), the 17-year-old protagonist, may be shy and insecure in many respects, but her attraction to girls is not a source of anxiety; she simply waits calmly to fall in love, accepting that the process takes time. After all, she is a lonely girl who has just moved to a new town following her mother’s death and is living with a father (Zach Braff) she doesn't know very well.
Summer stretches out before her like a blank diary as she bikes through the suburbs—bathed in the warm, golden light of a perpetual "magic hour" captured beautifully and evocatively by cinematographer Sonja Tsypin—even if Coley herself doesn't quite manage to enjoy it. Her social salvation comes in the form of Sonya (Molloy), an outgoing and cool girl who takes an interest in Coley after a chance encounter at a coffee shop and invites her to join her circle of friends.
Coley isn't keen on Sonya’s superficial friends—and certainly not on Trenton (Levon Hawke), that rude and possessive "almost-boyfriend"—yet a special connection develops between the two girls; as they spend more and more time alone together, the line separating the intense affection of best friends from romantic love quickly blurs. Kiyoko masterfully captures the electric thrill of budding desire, focusing on small, innocent gestures that suddenly take on enormous significance: lending a favorite jacket, drafting messages hesitantly only to analyze them for hidden meanings, or the boundary crossed when a knee shyly brushes against another in the back seat of a car.
She oscillates between seeming much younger and more mature than Sonya—whom Molloy portrays with a captivating, volatile energy marked by sudden shifts in mood. The film is enriched by a keen, precise sense of how the two girls observe one another—sometimes passively, at other times with an absorbed, unguarded fascination.
Attuned to both the spiritual connection and the physical restlessness inherent in these complex, intimate feelings and uncharted emotional waters, Kiyoko’s singularly beautiful teen film mirrors the dizzying, obsessive ecstasy of the song that inspired it—a track that plays during the end credits in a new, slower, and intoxicatingly atmospheric version. "We’ll be everything we ever need," Kiyoko sings lightly—a line brimming with the hopeful idealism of a first crush, now voiced by a woman who has moved past that stage and lived to tell the tale.
Comments
Post a Comment