Directed By Hayley Kiyoko

Starring – Maya da Costa, Myra Molloy, Zach Braff

The Plot – Coley (da Costa), 17, from rural Oregon, navigates intimacy after her mother’s passing. Meeting Sonya (Molloy) sparks new feelings, but self-doubt hinders their connection. Sonya, unfamiliar with dating girls, is uncertain. They learn to embrace emotions

Rated R for teen alcohol and drug use, and some adult language

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS – Official Trailer [HD] – Only In Theaters June 19

POSITIVES

Some films take longer paths than others towards being realized on the silver screen. For popstar-turned-filmmaker, Hayley Kiyoko, her semi-autobiographical story comprised in the film began as a music video, expanded into a novel, then became adapted to a feature length film, and considering this is a story that feels so painfully personal towards her, as a queer artist herself, she brings a vividness and sensitivity to this unique coming-of-age narrative that manages to feel universal on a grander scale, with so much memorability in the distinctions of the setting and adventurism of adolescence that comes across breezily in her absorbing direction. If Kiyoko excels at any one thing, it’s clearly in her accurate articulation on the awkwardness and elation stemming from an outcast finding a place where they fittingly belong, seen here through the blossoming friendship between Coley and Sonya, which initially begins as a means of inclusivity, before transitioning into something much more magnetically alluring for the tender-hearted teen, where Kiyoko’s intimately intoxicating rendering of the closing space between them not only emanates an aura of authenticity that feels both believable and terrifying at the same time, but also deconstructive in the definitive depths of both girls’ projected personalities, where the free-spirited confidence of Sonya, and the affectionately yearning side of Coley, clashes like enveloping waves of permeated passion between them, resulting in a physical and psychological attractive bond that feels glaringly evident in the impeccably natural brand of their meaningful chemistry. This obviously helps the audience to invest empathetically in the vital importance of what their friendship represents for the other, but beyond that allows Kiyoko the unfiltered kind of accessibility to document the memories and feelings of her own significant experiences that hang thickly in her subconsciousness as a storyteller, where the wandering eye of her lens trails off subtly during definitive moments between the girls, in order to balance those intoxicatingly nuanced components of an environment corroborating the defenseless barriers of those involved, with just enough restrain in the placement of the lens to keep from feeling uncomfortably invasive. In terms of Hayley enacting a period piece gimmick of 2006 over the film, there’s certainly enough soundtrack choices and utilized technology that bare distinction in the familiarity to those who lived through it, however never anything that feels like an unnecessarily hokey gimmick to instill nostalgia to the distracting deterrent of the film’s focus, instead using them in meaningfully profound ways that serve as an atmospheric ingredient to the inevitability of confrontation between Coley and Sonya. Such a delightful example stems from the complete absence of cellular phones among the characters, with only America Online’s Instant Messenger to bridge the gap of communication to draw the girls closer during their ice-breaking introductions towards one another, and it instantly brought back those feelings of trembling words and sleepless nights during make-or-break conversations that could possibly amount to something much more significant, and considering my grievances with a majority of the dialogue constructed between interacting characters, the occasional deviation to screen surveilling certainly presents a welcome opportunity to develop their bond away from intrusive outsiders, where Kiyoko’s direction revels in the suspense of every prolonged word and delayed response when framed from Coley’s curious perspective. The script, also written by Kiyoko, certainly has its abundance of problems in making the most of the 90-minute runtime, but when it does work it too speaks volumes about the frame of mind of the intended age, where gay rights and realities were far from the progressive mindset that we currently celebrate them as, even with it being well into the 21st century. When you consider our duo of primary protagonists are of high school age, you effortlessly understand Sonya’s hesitation with fully committing to a lesbian relationship, especially within the popularity stroke of her inner circle of friends being among the most ruthlessly crude that you’ll inevitably find in any school or surrounding town, but even in Kiyoko’s rendering of a societally extensive scope, it offers reminder that even with so much change in such a short amount of time, we still have so far to go in the accepting of the vital differences of others, a cautionary urgency that films like this one aim to appraise responsible awareness towards. Lastly, even as the film tells a meaningfully layered story, it would be ineffective without the merited performances elicited between Maya da Costa and Myra Molloy, who each openly embrace their respective insecurities with the kind of perceptive honesty and meticulous grace that makes every shared scene between them feel revelatory. Even with so much instinctual angst at her responsively supercharged deliveries during the film’s second half, da Costa brings a rich balance of innocence and vulnerability to her diverse portrayal, that constantly reminds you of the crucially debilitating loneliness bestowed upon the character, and what begins as a flirty and energetic side of masking for Molloy’s enigmatic work as Sonya, meticulously evolves into a mournfully insular and dejectedly dispirited shell of her once spontaneous self, offering a fully detailed and elaborate portrait of two young women experiencing the painful and confusing process of coming to grips with who they really are.

NEGATIVES

In terms of orientational and societal significance, Girls Like Girls is probably among the most important films that you’ll see this year, but even amidst an impactfully relevant directorial breakthrough for Kiyoko, there are still noticeably lacking problems with her script that keeps this film from realizing the full extent of its ambitious potential, beginning with the crucially underwritten supporting characters, who barely register influence to the air of the dramatic engagement. While I wholeheartedly understand that this is, was, and always will be Coley and Sonya’s film, the lack of attentive detail paid to antagonistic characters who ultimately drive much of the speculative conflict of unknowledgeable outsiders is distracting to say the least, especially with the abrupt disappearance of Levon Hawke’s Trenton, who as a love interest of Sonya’s seems primed to attain a bigger focus than the one he’s ultimately left with. To be wholeheartedly transparent here, Hawke’s work as an actor isn’t the most convincing or nuanced of the entire ensemble, whether as a result of his incapability as a character actor, or Kiyoko’s desire to make this character overbearing in contrast to those surrounding him, but he’s such an insignificant part of this script that it starts to become distracting the longer that he maintains distance away from it, and considering this is one of at least three examples of individualized arcs that are casually sifted over without anything closely resembling intentional focus, it leaves those moments away from Coley and Sonya feeling unbalanced as a result, leaving the script feeling a bit one-dimensional in its constructive outlining. Beyond this, the script is also responsible for this inescapably unflattering semblance of after-school artificiality towards its enacted sensibilities, especially in the confines of some downright laughably bad dialogue during the opening act that constantly kept taking me out of the necessary exposition distributed between characters. Most of this blame can certainly be attributed to two first time screenwriters in Kiyoko and actress-turned-screenwriter, Stefanie Scott, who together enact such blandly unappealing lines of romantic titillation that directly compromises the authentic air of aforementioned chemistry between da Costa and Molloy, but just as much detraction ultimately stems from the dialogue’s need to cater extensively on the side of its Young Adult demographic, and while I can understand playing towards the whole of your majority, it leaves little in the accessibility of crossover appeal for those forced to come along on date night, leaving the collective efforts of both actresses working overtime to ground the dialect of their dynamic with instinctual realism and grace derived from authenticity. Finally, even the satisfaction level of the resolution, if you can even call it that, left slightly more to be desired in terms of where the story concludes, requiring a post-credit scene to tie up all of the loose ends that weren’t resolved accordingly with the end of the film. While the resolution is greatly appreciated, I wonder why they delayed the actual ending of the movie to after the credits, as the scene in question, while rewarding for the audience investing in the characters, feels like a tacked-on studio note to close up matters as conveniently and concisely as expected in a movie with a bit of a cliffhanger, and if they were going to include such a ground-shaking moment in the dynamic between the two girls, why not include it as the final scene of the ending itself, rather than an afterthought that possibly a majority of your audience won’t even see?

OVERALL
Girls Like Girls is a vividly immersive and poignantly honest coming-of-age story with just enough persisting heart in the air of Hayley Kiyoko’s beautifully absorbing direction, and Maya da Costa and Myra Molloy’s emotional heavy lifting, to overcome a stagnant screenplay of inconsistent dialogue and underwritten characters. Drifting back to a more complicated time of coming out, the film provides complexity to a bittersweet romance deterred by fear and ignorance, offering an insightfully illuminated look at queer adolescence, even if the film fails to break new ground in the category.

My Grade: 6.6 or C+