Just like the protagonist, watching this film for me was an act of experimentation in a genre i'm not particularly familiar with (LGBT). The reviews describe it as a stunning masterpiece of cinema, but i felt compelled to comment simply to redress the balance.
TL;DR: this is a sales pitch for the lesbian lifestyle - targeted at the US middle class - attempting to masquerade as a "deep" film.
The pretentiousness and disingenuousness are what stand out the most, but simply the most frustrating point of the whole two hours is that it's misses an incredible opportunity to examine the powerful and interesting issues it so nearly touches on: female sexual dysfunction, the moral ambiguity of prostitution, the awkward navigation of sexual fantasy, the family dynamics of terminal diagnosis, and more. It scrapes the 0.1% sludge off a barrel ten miles deep.
This is what it *could* have been, if it weren't such a blatant and craven agenda-driven Trojan horse. It doesn't touch on any of these.
The message: being a lesbian is awesome, and you should try it if you're a middle class white housewife. It's the solution of all of a woman's problems, and the only route to true and safe sexual experience, which will ultimately heal you from your emotional repression (see the name of the film). Fulfilling your sexual fantasies is a way to cope with your cancer diagnosis, whilst being surrounded by all the terribly abusive masculine influences in your life you never cared about anyway.
How do you know it's a sales pitch? Sales only emphasises one side of an equation: the "beneficial" one the salesperson wants you to buy. Journalistic or cinematic integrity demands both sides are examined. There is no downside to the character's choices.
Aside from the horrendous cliché around every corner (straight girl's OMG lesbian besties!, sexually abusive stepfather, noble 2nd career escort, cynical brothel madam, lesbian liberation, ungrateful kids etc), the forced acting, the wooden dialogue, the unlikable characters that are impossible to attach to, the endless piano soundtrack covering up bad background noise over slow-mo porn, the faux/feigned/forced sentiment, the sanctimonious message, the erotica laced with feigned "philosophical" therapy talk, and the almost sociopathic disassociation from a central issue as devastating as terminal cancer, the most redeeming thing about this walking advertisement for gay normalcy is it's done with a degree of tasteful sensitivity and got a well-used switcharoo trope that approaches surprise.
If you think this is somehow "deep", you clearly must be the type of insincere person this kind of film appeals to, who thinks it means "slow motion shots with piano". It's pure self- indulgent claptrap with a self-involved character from a self-indulgent director trying to sell pink ideology whilst willfully ignoring the challenging issues it could really have bitten into.
If you're going to try to extrapolate a "milf" porn scenario into a serious film, at least add some blowback to decisions and/or make your characters remotely human. You want your audience to actually care if your protagonist dies.
Go rent "Milk", "Circumstance", or "Boys Don't Cry" instead.
TL;DR: this is a sales pitch for the lesbian lifestyle - targeted at the US middle class - attempting to masquerade as a "deep" film.
The pretentiousness and disingenuousness are what stand out the most, but simply the most frustrating point of the whole two hours is that it's misses an incredible opportunity to examine the powerful and interesting issues it so nearly touches on: female sexual dysfunction, the moral ambiguity of prostitution, the awkward navigation of sexual fantasy, the family dynamics of terminal diagnosis, and more. It scrapes the 0.1% sludge off a barrel ten miles deep.
This is what it *could* have been, if it weren't such a blatant and craven agenda-driven Trojan horse. It doesn't touch on any of these.
The message: being a lesbian is awesome, and you should try it if you're a middle class white housewife. It's the solution of all of a woman's problems, and the only route to true and safe sexual experience, which will ultimately heal you from your emotional repression (see the name of the film). Fulfilling your sexual fantasies is a way to cope with your cancer diagnosis, whilst being surrounded by all the terribly abusive masculine influences in your life you never cared about anyway.
How do you know it's a sales pitch? Sales only emphasises one side of an equation: the "beneficial" one the salesperson wants you to buy. Journalistic or cinematic integrity demands both sides are examined. There is no downside to the character's choices.
Aside from the horrendous cliché around every corner (straight girl's OMG lesbian besties!, sexually abusive stepfather, noble 2nd career escort, cynical brothel madam, lesbian liberation, ungrateful kids etc), the forced acting, the wooden dialogue, the unlikable characters that are impossible to attach to, the endless piano soundtrack covering up bad background noise over slow-mo porn, the faux/feigned/forced sentiment, the sanctimonious message, the erotica laced with feigned "philosophical" therapy talk, and the almost sociopathic disassociation from a central issue as devastating as terminal cancer, the most redeeming thing about this walking advertisement for gay normalcy is it's done with a degree of tasteful sensitivity and got a well-used switcharoo trope that approaches surprise.
If you think this is somehow "deep", you clearly must be the type of insincere person this kind of film appeals to, who thinks it means "slow motion shots with piano". It's pure self- indulgent claptrap with a self-involved character from a self-indulgent director trying to sell pink ideology whilst willfully ignoring the challenging issues it could really have bitten into.
If you're going to try to extrapolate a "milf" porn scenario into a serious film, at least add some blowback to decisions and/or make your characters remotely human. You want your audience to actually care if your protagonist dies.
Go rent "Milk", "Circumstance", or "Boys Don't Cry" instead.