Life Partners

Life Partners is one of those movies where you can tell some actual WLW definitely had a hand in making it. The amount of specific jokes about the lesbian community that we generally keep hidden from the straights proves this. Between this and Life Partners’ casual approach to the fact that one of their main characters was gay, I was really surprised to see this movie was made over five years ago. Life Partners very much is one of the new generation of queer movies where queerness is matter of fact and made by actual LGBTQ* people in all their knowledge of actual queer experience. And, it’s funny!

Life Partners is about best friends Paige and Sasha. While they initially complain that neither can find a partner they like as much as each other, Paige finds one. As Paige starts getting serious with boyfriend, Tim, Paige and Sasha’s friendship struggles. Eager to find someone to fill the gap in her life left by Paige, Sasha starts seeing a mess of a 21 year old named Mia.

The focus of Life Partners is very much friendship over romance. Paige and Sasha are the core relationship of the film. And what a good depiction of friendship it is! Life Partners isn’t the first nor will it be the last movie to use friendship, especially between women as a source of both conflict and comedy. I can’t speak for friendship between men or between men and women, but friendship between women can be a very intense, intimate thing that makes for good story fodder. What makes Life Partners really good is that it understands this sort of friendship very well. Despite their closeness, Sasha’s jealousy never appears to be romantically based. As the film so brilliantly observes, the problem is that Paige still has a very close partner in her life, it’s now just her boyfriend. But this leaves Sasha in the lurch and without someone to lean on.

What also surprised me about Life Partners was its depiction of queerness. With this sort of crowd-pleasing comedy, even a more indie venture like Life Partners runs the risk of really watering down queer elements. Gay characters might say in dialogue that they’re gay but never have a partner or if they do, they won’t ever kiss them or some such nonsense. This is not the case here at all. Sasha isn’t an isolated lesbian in a movie of straights. Instead, all of her and Paige’s other friends are lesbians. And Sasha not only talks about being a lesbian often but she engages physically with women in the movie in a way that isn’t played for the gaze.

Life Partners is definitely part of the new class of queer films and especially comedies. It has a very modern take on not only sexuality but friendship and life overall. It’s also successful as a comedy with a great deal of funny dialogue that also works for developing characters. Overall, Life Partners is a successful little comedy film with refreshingly modern, queer sensibilities

Overall rating: 7.5/10

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