Girl/Girl Scene- The Movie

Reading other reviews, it seems like there’s only one positive other critics have pulled from Girl/Girl Scene- The Movie. That being the representation. Girl/Girl Scene is a film focusing almost exclusively on a group of sapphic friends. And representation is worth something, it always is. But especially for this 2019 movie, representation can’t be the only thing you offer. I hope this very website has proven that especially in recent years, queer people are no longer as starved for onscreen representation. The WLW list on this site currently has over 1100 films with major lesbian content. With such a large pool to choose from, there’s little reason to watch Girl/Girl Scene- The Movie. It really doesn’t have a lot of positives beyond its abundance of lesbians.

The film follows a group of lesbian friends in what might be present day, or might be 1984. I’m still not sure. The leader of the group is Evan, played by the writer/director of the series, Tucky Williams. Evan’s girlfriend is Bridget, who’s been dating Evan since she was 18 and thus, lacks any additional lesbian experience. There’s also Ryan, a rich party girl who loves cocaine; Dov, a punky butch with a sensitive soul and Trista, who is still in love with her ex-wife. Much of the drama follows Evan and Bridget’s relationship and how it gets complicated when other women in their group develop feelings for Evan and Bridget respectively.

I cannot tell if this movie is a period piece and that bothers me. On Tubi, the film is straight-up called Girl/Girl Scene 1984. There’s a VHS aesthetic to the scene transitions. The music and credits also lean into 80’s synth aesthetics. There are no cellphones in the movie, just landlines and pay phones. That’s the evidence that this is a period piece. The evidence that it’s not? Pretty much everything else. The styling of every character is overtly 2010s. Other technology like televisions suggest a time more recent than the 1980s. Also, Trista’s plot involves her going through a divorce with her ex-wife which wouldn’t be possible in the 1980s. I don’t know what Girl/Girl Scene was going for. If it is a period piece, it’s a failure. If it’s an homage it still sucks because the homage feels uneven and half-assed.

As for the film’s story, it’s not particularly successful. The film seems to expect you to have an immediate familiarity or interest in these characters which I simply do not. And in the film’s two-hour running time, I never got to that point. The stakes lack drama. Much of the issues are relationship drama. That’s a common beginning of fictional conflict and drama. But this friend group is already such an incestuous polycule that the fact that characters might date other characters in the group seems like an inevitability. Especially because these women lack proper boundaries with one another so it sort of seems like they’re all dating anyways.

There’s often little narrative continuity between scenes. Perhaps that’s a holdover from the film’s webseries origins. But everything from events to character motivation feels like it resets once a scene transitions. This makes it additionally hard to give a shit. The mixture of this lack of continuity, bad acting and camerawork often makes scenes feel like they’re the opening minutes of a porno. And sometimes, that is the case as it will just be a bad dialogue scene between two women and then a softcore sex scene that’s about twice as long. But even when the scene doesn’t end in sex, the seeming lack of care into writing a narrative through-line or notable character traits makes it feel like the film’s focus isn’t character. Which is weird, because it definitely is.

The are few positives to Girl/Girl Scene- The Movie. One of them is that I do actually believe all these women want to kiss each other. The chemistry between any two characters on that level works. I don’t believe their character traits or backstory, but I do believe they want to kiss this other woman. In fact, I think these women kissing each other might have been the entire driving force behind this film. I also do think Tucky Williams did well casting herself as the film’s lead. She is one of the more dynamic actresses. And she gives her character the most depth. Impressively, Williams side-steps the mistake of making her self-insert character the least flawed. She goes the opposite route and has Evan be perhaps the most problematic character in the film. That also makes her character the most fully-realized.

Girl/Girl Scene -The Movie doesn’t offer you anything beyond some white women kissing. The story is bland and lacks follow through. None of the characters are memorable. The visuals don’t warrant any attention either. This is simply not a successful film or story and no amount of lesbian lead characters is going to change that. And I’m still pissed off that I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a period piece or not.

Overall rating: 2.3/10

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