Do I Love You?

Do I Love You? is about a woman named Marina. Following a recent breakup with girlfriend Romy, Marina begins exploring different ideas and facets of her identity. These include her lesbian identity, artistic output as a lesbian, gender and how she feels about children. Through these explorations we meet Marina’s social group who seem to be largely intelligent academic or creative types. We also see snippets of her relationship with Romy.

The plot in Do I Love You is not the focus. It’s really just there to tie together these ideas that the main character focuses on somewhat comically. Honestly, Do I Love You? may be too smart to be funny. Or, to put it less charitably, the intelligence this movie possesses doesn’t often extend to understanding how to land a joke. It’s “quirky,” sure. But the film is not often outright funny.

Do I Love You? fits into the same genre as Go Fish or The Watermelon Woman– indie lesbian films made by very intelligent people with a focus on identity. Do I Love You? is just not as successful and zeitgeist-y as those films, however. My concern is that the film loses relevance as time marches on. The issues Marina explores and the conclusions she gains aren’t always relevant to someone watching this in 2021. The exploration of gender, for example is something comes across as dated. The film’s focus on the lesbian identity as it existed in the early 2000s makes it something that doesn’t age well. The lesbian identity and how people relate to that has and will continue to change. So, Do I Love You? will eventually work as a time capsule but I don’t think it’s quite old enough for that yet either.

The film is clearly a low-budget indie film with limited means. Grading on that curve though, it does really well. Everyone working on this movie was clearly good at their jobs which is obviously a major factor in making a good movie with little budget. The script is tight, the camera work is great and they’ve found unknown actors who give a uniformly naturalistic performance. Also, the movie is 72 minutes which is the right choice. I get frustrating when low-budget movies are over ~90 minutes. Do I Love You?‘s brisk runtime not only allowed focus of talent and budget but also shows an understanding of pacing and allows the movie to just be the bare essentials and the best bits of the movie without filler.

At the end of the day, I think Do I Love You? turned out exactly how the filmmakers had in mind. Whether or not the movie is for you, it is a movie that’s certain of its identity and does what it set out to do. Frankly, the movie is hit and miss for me. Sometimes it’s quirky and enjoyable and there are actually interesting conversations about the lesbian identity or related topics. However, sometimes the movie is too dated or not universal enough that I can relate to it. Still, it is, or at least will be in the future an interesting time capsule of its time and place.

Overall rating: 5.3/10

Other WLW films in similar genres