Red Cow

Queer coming of age movies are really starting to exist as a binary or spectrum to me. On the one end, you’ve got the ones where kissing a girl is all of it. The protagonist can ignore the rest of the world in the arms of their new, queer romance. On the other end is the ones in which this romance only plays into larger themes. Red Cow is one such movie. Our protagonist’s queerness isn’t something that allows her to shut out the rest of the world. Instead, it’s something that changes and colours her reactions to an already politically and socially fraught reality.

Benny lives in Israel. Her mother died at birth, leaving her father as her sole parent. These days, Benny’s father seems to be getting more and more radicalized on a religious and political level. Benny’s father acquires a red baby cow, a sign of good fortune and religious significance. This red cow is celebrated, doted on and Benny in particular comes to find kinship with it. After all, Benny’s also got a young female with red hair. Do you see the parallel yet? Of course, This celebrated red cow is a sacrifice. And Benny feels a certain way about that too. She feels a disconnect from her father and much of the cultural and religious expectations of a young woman. She finds friendship in a girl named Yael. Within this friendship, Benny finds at least one of the reasons why she’s at such a disconnect from cultural and religious teachings.

Red Cow is very culturally specific. It’s about what it’s like to be a young, queer woman in Israel. Its nearest comparison would be Blush, which is also a queer teen movie from Israel. Though by comparison, Blush feels a lot more secular. Red Cow’s focus is rooted much more in traditional expectations. And those expectations don’t offer much for Benny. Benny is trying to determine her sense of self. And what she feels is extreme disconnect with many of these expectations. She shamefully tells Yael at one point that she feels like a gentile. Disconnected as she is, the only framework Benny has for her feelings are religious-based. Many gentiles feel the same disconnect with their culture as Benny. But Benny can’t know that. She can only know her own experiences of youth and her specific place in the world.

This specificity and exploration of identity is Red Cow’s strongest element. This feels like a film that was expected to be seen by an audience far beyond its home country. It gives people like me, who don’t live in Israel a window into the world through the perspective of a citizen who nonetheless feels like an outsider. And within the perspective, the film explores a series of cultural moments that make things difficult for a protagonist who is not just female, but queer. There are some universal themes in Red Cow, of course. But even these themes are always explored through a lens of cultural specificity. This is Red Cow’s triumph for me, at least as someone coming at this film from and outsider’s perspective.

As yet another queer coming of age movie, I appreciated Red Cow’s perspective. I think I’ve burnt out on the coming of age movies that are primarily nice cinematography and women kissing. Benny gets to kiss a girl, but even that girl tells her that she cannot hide from everything going on outside their walls. There are many factors that Benny has to live with as she comes of age. And these factors can’t be ignored or denied. So, the movie doesn’t either. But it makes space for those factors as well as Benny’s first lesbian romance. The specific setting of Red Cow is the film’s greatest strength. It is an interesting watch as a universal audience for its very specific setting and exploration thereof.

Overall rating: 6.6/10

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