Breaking the Girls

Breaking the Girls was directed by well-known WLW film director Jamie Babbit who directed the classic lesbian film, But I’m a Cheerleader. With her at the helm, I was expecting so much more from this movie. Instead it turned out to be a classic, ill-thought out thriller which fucks itself in the ass in the third act by doing a few too many plot twists. The only difference is it’s slightly gayer than usual.

The film isabout Sara, who develops a relationship with a girl named Alex and eventually moves in with her. The relationship goes past friendship after a night of drunken lesbianism. It soon turns out Alex is rather unstable as she tries to create a pact with Sara in which Sara would kill Alex’s stepmother and Alex would kill Sara’s bully. Alex then does kill Sara’s bully and tries to blackmail Sara into killing her stepmother, Kate. However, Kate is not as ignorant as she first appears and has her own motives, ‘s allegiances and agendas.

That’s the setup. For the first two acts, it plays out exactly as you might think. Not even necessarily in a bad way. Alex is obsessive and manipulative and Sara gets drawn into doing crime. Kate’s an unknown third variable. I’m okay with this premise and the execution is competent. Plus, occasionally some girls kiss.

Then we get to the third act. In the third act, Breaking the Girls stacks about six plot twists on top of each other. They’re all the same thing, really. It’s just characters double-crossing each other by working with one of the limited other characters this movie has. Charitably, it adds an element of mistrust to every character onscreen. Realistically, it’s just plans that are overly elaborate and characters who are needlessly double/triple/quadruple agents because the movie doesn’t have enough other characters. The majority of this misdirection gets heaped onto Kate and her character and the plot itself collapses under one two many misdirection. It ends up feeling needlessly complicated and not thrilling so much as irritating.

In terms of camerawork and visuals, Breaking the Girls is competent. Ditto with acting. But oh man, this story is frustrating. Breaking the Girls is self-aware enough to know that it’s not very interesting. The problem is that the way it tries to fix this problem is through increasingly confusing plot twists that contradict and muddy previous events. Whatever decent set-up the first two acts had is brought low by adding at least two too many plot twists to the third act. Like so many thrillers, it tries to compensate by having multiple twists unaware that by doing so, it just makes itself seem more ridiculous and less interesting. Sure, Breaking the Girls has more lady kissing in it than most but overall, it’s like the bazillion other mediocre thrillers that make the same mistake of thinking more misdirects equals a better movie. It doesn’t.

Overall rating: 4.6/10

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