She Monkeys

She Monkeys is about Emma, a teenager girl who has just joined an equine acrobatics team. Here, she meets Cassandra with whom she develops a close bond. However, in the third act, their relationship is challenged as they end up competing against each other for a spot on the elite team. There is also a subplot that keeps superseding the teen lesbian bit of this movie which is terrible and I will talk about in a bit. First though, let’s look at the lesbian bit.

Like so many movies about queer teenage girls, She Monkeys involves Emma and Cassandra engaging in a slightly possessive or unhealthy relationship. Especially on Cassandra’s part which make her the more interesting character. Emma is just sort of… there. That’s not really what you want in the movie’s protagonist. Frankly, I’ve seen a relationship like this depicted better and I’ve seen it depicted worse. I have no particular quarrel with this depiction. There is one scene that did annoy me wherein they go to a lake. Cassandra blindfolds Emma and then places a jellyfish in her outstretched hands. Absolutely not. If anyone surprised me with a jellyfish I would immediately cease all contact. That’s unacceptable.

 Another frustration I have with She Monkeys is that it feels rather aimless. None of the plot lines really amount to anything. From the beginning, this is a movie that has that sort of “indie movie” pacing where we just follow a fairly regular character living her normal life. There’s a lot of scenes that don’t necessarily advance the plot. The third act sort of follows through and resolves some plots but not well. Cassandra’s obsessive feelings towards Emma go nowhere. They peter out as we reach the climax of the film rather than ramp up.

I feel like She Monkeys squandered a lot of potential regarding its set-up of these girls meeting through equine acrobatics. They hired actresses who seem to have some sort of acrobatic training and that goes largely under-utilized. Only the first and last fifteen minutes of this movie really focus on the sport. To me, it would make sense for Emma and Cassandra’s very intense and quickly developed relationship be something born out of a sport that involves as much trust as equine acrobatics as well as a great deal of physically close, partner-assisted stretching. Instead, their relationship develops in normal, boring places. This was a missed opportunity both in the developing of the main characters’ relationship and also just in terms of there being some really cool visuals of girls doing crazy, flexible shit probably while on a horse. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t focus on that.

What really dragged this movie down is the increasingly prevalent subplot involving Emma’s younger sister. There isn’t really any sort of traditional story here, it’s just a bunch of scenes of a six year old acting or saying somewhat sexual things while being clearly ignorant of their full meaning. Said six year old character is also nude in more than one scene.

Far too much of the movie’s run time is spent on this subplot of a child engaging in semi-provocative behaviour. As the movie draws to a close and we should be ramping up to a climax with our main characters, this subplot becomes more prominent instead of less. It’s boring and without any sort of resolution or journey. She acts the same at the start of the movie as she does at the ended. Nothing is changed nor learned. On top of all of this, the young actress playing this character is not very good. The role itself is poorly written but Quvenzhané Wallis, this kid is not.

I’m also heavily morally opposed to this subplot. There’s a lot of child nudity in this film. This is bad enough and made worse because the child in question makes sexual statements and whatnot. Again, I get that children do probably do weird, awkward, vaguely sexual things at this age but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they cast an actual human child. There’s an actual child playing this role who was asked to not only be naked on set but to interact intimately and in a sexualized manner with people who are in no way related to her. I don’t think it was morally correct to have a child act these scenes out.

In terms of the main WLW plot, if you’ve seen more than one foreign coming-of-age WLW film, you can probably skip this one. Primarily, She Monkeys feels like a movie I’ve seen before. When it doesn’t feel like that, it’s because of the younger sister plot line which feels like a movie I aggressively did not want to see. There was a lot of unrealized potential here and that was really, really frustrating. Even though when I watched the movie, I sometimes spoke my idea of how to improve this movie aloud to my laptop, NONE of my suggestions were taken and the movie is worse for it. Also, just don’t put naked kids in your movie. Don’t do it.

Overall rating: 3.7/10

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