Three films about resets, restarts, and beginnings
According to solar/Gregorian calendars, it’s a new year! To be honest, the first four days of 2023 have already been exhausting for me, but I’m glad to be recommending queer and trans shorts films again after a two-week break.
I’ll keep the intro short because this week’s theme is new beginnings, which kind of speaks for itself. Enjoy!
“I’m mad that I spent a whole year studying to be queer and none of it fucking matters.”
The First Time, written and directed by Drew Burnett Gregory (who you may know from her writing at Autostraddle), was made in 2020 during the pandemic with a $20 budget, largely shot on Zoom, and its sixteen-minute runtime is largely comprised of two people talking, with little other action. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this isn’t a compelling and engaging film.
Charlie (played by Gregory herself) and Alex (Kerry Warren) connect on Tinder during the early part of the pandemic, and decide to meet on a virtual date. Their conversation ranges from awkward at the beginning, to cute and flirty as they start to connect more, to emotional and starkly honest as they talk about their journeys with coming out and dating as a trans lesbian and a cis bisexual woman, and right back to flirty again. It all feels natural and meaningful, and grounded in the context of what is happening in the world around them – what has been happening to all of us as COVID-19 has killed, disabled, and isolated so many.
“I think I’m always, always thinking about other trans people, other queer people, and with that my desire is to just represent our lived experiences with as much nuance as possible. So I have some very broad goals, but I try to not stop there and to go even deeper,” said Gregory in an interview with Heather Hogan at Autostraddle. “There simply is not work — at least work I’ve seen — about trans lesbians in their 20s dating and being messy. That alone feels new to me in a way it frankly shouldn’t. But that novelty isn’t a novelty for me — it’s my everyday life. It’s certainly something I’m committed to representing, but to hold my own interest I need another layer and with this film it’s specifically exploring this pattern I’ve experienced where queer people who have never been with women before are drawn to me.”
The First Time
“I had a lot of ‘amigas’ in my life.”
Amigas with Benefits, written and directed by Adelina Anthony, is a charming and sweet film about two elder Latinx lesbians, Lupita (Yuny Parada) and Ramona (Sandra Matrecitos), who are set to marry at the senior residence they both live in. Only one problem: Lupita’s daughter Virginia (Karla Legaspy) storms in to halt the wedding, invoking her power as Lupita’s legal guardian to keep the two apart. But Ramona and Lupita won’t let anything get in the way of their love.
This film is sometimes a bit on the nose – Virginia is so clearly the villain, with her blatant homophobia and her refusal to let her mother have any agency, while almost everyone else in the film is an unparalleled hero supporting queer love. But sometimes we need that! Sometimes we need to see such a clear repudiation of bigotry because we don’t always get it in our own lives. Even if that means there are lines like, “I’m sorry, mi amor, I couldn’t do it because I’m too much of a feminista. I couldn’t hurt another mujer!” which made me laugh with its sense of clarity and drama.
“Amigas with Benefits is a way to center a community that figures prominently in my life,” said Anthony to La Bloga. “As Xicanx, we come from a culture of respecting elders. I’m aware of how our queer elders of color are practically non-existent in cultural productions, especially film. So this small offering is a way to open conversations up about their experiences and needs.”
Amigas with Benefits
“It’s still the same time as when you left. It’s always 6:05 in this town.”
La carta | The Letter, written and directed by Ángeles Cruz, follows the homecoming of Lupe (Sonia Couoh), an indigenous woman, to the town where she grew in southern Oaxaca after many years away. The town hasn’t changed much, but Lupe has, and her return garners mixed reactions – hostility and homophobia from her parents, and simultaneous excitement and apprehension from her old friend Rosalía (Myriam Bravo). Cruz’s direction depicts this story with beautiful, deliberate camera work and cinematography, as well as a score that ramps up the tension between Lupe and Rosalía when they meet again.
Cruz, who grew up in Villa Guadalupe Victoria – a similar, predominantly-indigenous town in the mountains of Oaxaca – brought some of her own experience to the film. “When I spoke to people in my village about this story, they said [love between women] doesn’t exist here. But why is it that it doesn’t exist in this village? It exists between gay men, but between women? They said no,” said Cruz in an interview (translation mine). “So I came to this film with the idea that this love doesn’t exist openly…and that a sexist narrative is in place. Ultimately, we all talk about what interests us. I was interested in opening up the theme of gay women and sharing that story with my community.”
La carta | The Letter
