Sonja

Sonja is the very relatable story of a young teenage girl in love with her best friend. Sonja and her friend Julia are close enough that Sonja’s mother feels uncomfortable by their relationship and encourages her to date boys. Unfortunately, despite their closeness and Sonja’s feelings, Julia is straight. Julia dates lots of boys and tries to get Sonja to as well. Finally fed up with her mother’s control and her unrequited crush, Sonja goes to stay with her father, step-mother and younger brother. However, the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality follow her here too. As all of her female friends find boyfriends and lose their virginity, the confused Sonja encourages the advancements of an older man.

The best thing about Sonja is how well it captures the feeling of having a teen crush on another girl. The scenes between Sonja and Julia where Sonja was so fixated on Julia who is pretty unaware of Sonja’s affections are deeply relatable. The film also captures the inherent intimacy of young female friends. It’s completely understandable why Sonja would develop a crush. She and Julia share beds and kisses and deep conversation. This is common among female friendships but is just a tiny step away from being a romantic attachment. It’s understandable and relatable that Julia sees them as just friends despite this intimacy whereas Sonja interprets it as something more because of this same intimacy.

The movie starts to lose me when Sonja visits her dad. Because without her infatuation to Julia, she has nothing else interesting going for her as a character. Sonja is in almost all respects an average, unremarkable teenage girl. The only interesting thing about her for me at least was her desperate, queer crush. With that taking a backseat to family drama and general teen angst, I found myself much less interested.

The movie has something to say about compulsory heterosexuality but that theme doesn’t really get fleshed out beyond, “it exists.” It is a very prevalent force in Sonja’s life, though. This poor girl is being pushed to date men by her friends, mother, father and even her pseudo-girlfriend. Sonja’s confusion is understandable. As much as her feelings are too strong to ignore, on all sides she’s bombarded with the idea that the only path for her is to date men.

So, in an effort to be like all the other girls, Sonja allows the advancements of an adult man. This bit of the movie was creepy in that it wasn’t as creepy as it should have been. The man in question is surprisingly nice about the whole thing and even notices that Sonja’s probably queer. So good on Sonja for finding the one man who likes sleeping with teenagers who’s actually polite about it, I guess. The whole situation is still obviously not great. I like to think of this plot in the movie as a cautionary tale for parents watching. See what happens if you don’t accept your child’s age-appropriate same-sex relationship? They’ll sleep with adult men! Is that what you want? Sonja said respect your child’s sexuality or they’ll end up fucking creepy older guys.

Overall, Sonja is pretty average. On a technical level, everything in the film is fine but not exceptional. And the story of the film is nothing I haven’t seen before. I have seen this movie done worse. I’ve also seen it done better. Sonja is ultimately a competent but unremarkable coming of age film.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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