- cross-posted to:
- traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2591726
i donāt have the first idea of how to talk about this movie. you need to see it, especially if youāre trans. even more if youāre transfem, and most of all if youāre transfem or questioning but havenāt come out or started transition yet. i cannot recommend it enough, itās in theaters now and you should see it there if at all possible. this is going to be kind of a mess because this movie made me feel so many emotions i have no idea how to properly express, but iāll do my best
this movie is about you if youāve ever felt trapped in your own body, feeling like youāre drowning and not knowing why. if youāve ever loved a work of art so much it became the lens you saw the world through and felt alienated because of how the people around you didnāt get it. if youāve ever been stuck in a small town and known something was wrong, this isnāt how things are supposed to be, life isnāt meant to be like this. but most of all, if youāve ever looked at yourself in the mirror and cried because youāll die looking like this. if youāve known youāll die as a man and nothing is scarier than that, but what other choice do you have? you might even know thereās another option, but it seems impossible and itās almost scarier than dying like this
this is a movie about a lot of things, but first and foremost it is about being a transgender woman in that time when you know in the back of your mind that that is what you are but are too scared to truly let that out. some people are saying this is subtext, which is absurd. the main character is transgender. this is the text of the film
there will be some spoilers after this point, because i canāt keep talking around the actual movie itself, though iāll avoid anything too major outside a spoiler tag
the main character (who i am going to refer to as isabel and with she/her pronouns because it makes me feel nauseous to refer to her with the name she goes by for almost the entire movie) is a closeted transgender woman growing up in the 1990s. the movie is about her and a friend (maddy, who is a lesbian) bonding over a show (called the pink opaque) that they connect to in a way they canāt connect with the world around them. isabel is trans and in the closet and she never leaves the closet. she never says she is trans, or that sheās a girl, or tries to live as a woman. she is in the closet, she is too scared to say the words. maddy recognizes this in her, tries to push her to express herself, but isabel doesnāt. she lives her life as a man, pushes maddy away every time maddy reaches out. maddy gets out of the small conservative suburb they live in, changes her name to tara to reject the past. even so, tara never found a community. she comes back one last time to try and get isabel to come with her
spoilers for the end of the film
the most harrowing scene in the film comes after isabel rejects tara. sheās too scared to leave the home she knows, deciding all the pain that comes with her life as a man is better than going into the unknown and living as a woman. as she walks home she passes by chalk writing on the street in the same handwriting and color as when she would get notes from maddy about the pink opaque back in high school. the chalk reads āitās not too lateā and āthere is still timeā. she ignores it, walks past it. in a voiceover she says āit was time i became a productive member of society, it was time i became a man.ā it still exists in her no matter how hard she tries to reject it, but she buries it as much as she can. we see her decades later, still living that life no matter how obvious it is that the pink opaque and her true identity are within her. there is still time but she doesnāt believe that. sheās convinced herself itās too late, that sheās made her choice and has to stick to it. she accidentally lets some of these buried emotions slip out and as the film ends sheās apologizing to everyone around her for making such a mistake as they completely ignore her, her alienation stronger than ever
some of the pieces of the transfem experience that show up in this movie iāve never seen anything else touch on. the way that men around you will try and bond with you and you canāt follow along. you fuck up, and they realize on some level that youāre different and they grow hostile to you. the crushing weight of those around you constantly scrutinizing you for anything you do being too effeminate, and how even when that isnāt the thing theyāre looking for itās what youāre scared theyāll find. the way many of us gravitate towards other queer people even when we canāt define ourselves, and canāt answer why when people ask
this movie is drenched in the crushing weight of dysphoria. itās impossible to describe to someone who hasnāt seen it, or to someone who hasnāt lived it. the one time a characterās actor changes is when isabel goes from 7th grade, played by a kid of the right age, to 9th grade, played by an adult man. this shift in her body, the way she views herself, is so dramatic it feels slightly ridiculous, but thatās how it is. when she looks at herself in the mirror, when she is talking to her father, when she deals with customers or coworkers or gets called āsirā at the drive through it feels like sheās being hit with a hammer. it beats her down until she has no hope, no matter how much the world around her and the one person who sees her for who she is tell her otherwise. itās not too late, itās never too late. there is always still time. but she canāt, sheās been crushed into her assigned role and is too scared to leave. itās maybe the saddest movie iāve ever seen
i know people who saw this movie and realized this would be them if they didnāt find the courage to come out. a friend called her mom and came out right after watching it. on letterboxd several reviews are from women who only realized what they were through this film. it might be the single most transgender thing iāve ever seen
i havenāt talked at all about one of the major plotlines of the movie, because itās something i think would be better not spoiled and itās not as important for this pitch. and i want to be clear this is a kind of weird movie, it does not have moments of catharsis and it can be hard to follow from scene to scene. itās very lynchian in the truest sense of that, itās david lynch if he was a trans millennial. itās labeled as horror by many but it isnāt truly scary, more existentially troubling. a movie that makes me feel like iām dying, but not one that scared me in any kind of horror movie way
i wanna just put some words from other people here, add some slightly different perspectives
these ones have spoilers
Iāve never seen a movie so laser-focused at one specific group: this is an arrow aimed directly at trans or questioning people in their mid 20s to mid 40s who have grappled with the fear of transitioning.
The horror of this film is the horror of the refusal of the call, and the comfort of the numbing normal keeping you from true happiness. The horror of ābut I donāt WANT to face fear and risk of death to live as my true selfā. The horror of knowing deep down that it will all be better, but of being so scared that you never take that horrifying step.
I watched it as a BLINDINGLY unsubtle movie aimed at the genderqueer audience. It hit and it hurt because I KNOW girls stuck in the same cycle that our Isabel/Owen is stuck in. It was horrifying on a level that got under my skin and stuck deep. The metaphor of suffocation and rebirth is a compelling one for transition, and the fear of death that accompanies it is something that I think every trans person has dealt with.
I watched it in theater. I had a cis queer film nerd friend with me, and everyone else watching this matinee appeared to be cis men. I heard a lot of grumbling and questioning from the boys in attendance. Lots of āGoing to have to think on itā, which is film nerd for āI didnāt get itā. My cis friend caught the trans allegory but missed most of the connections. I think that itās not going to land for a lot of people.
when maddy tells owen she likes girls and asks him if he does too, he says (to paraphrase) āi donāt know, i like tv shows. when i think about that stuff, it feels like someoneās ripped me open and tore out all my organs.ā after he watches the finale of the pink opaque, heās vomiting the blue luna juice and sobbing about how this isnāt real, which i relate to like feeling trapped in this unaccepting environment . he does this right after realizing he is isabel, but he still hides it and shoved it down and represses it. then thereās obviously the end, where he cuts himself open in the bathroom and sees the static inside of himself for what it is. it calls back to the line āit feels like someoneās ripped me open and tore out my organs.ā which was a REPONSE to being asked about specifically sexuality and more broadly, queerness. there arenāt organs there. thereās the static. he was right and itās a relief and itās terrifying and itās full of guilt and shame and regret and fear. itās the experience of seeing yourself after years of hiding and repression and itās directly a queer experience. like hello
Looks good tho. Iāll have to see this at some point. Anyone know of a good torrent yet for this or some way to watch it online?
no, sorry. someone mentioned a camrip but itās apparently pretty bad