The First Girl I Loved (2019)

The First Girl I Loved is not the most groundbreaking or ambitious film, especially in its visual choices. But this small-scale tragedy is tender enough to generate some emotion in me as a viewer. It’s also the better of the two WLW movies with the title The First Girl I Loved.

The film begins with protagonist Wing receiving an invitation to be the maid of honor at her teenage friend, Sylvia’s wedding. In flashbacks, we see the girls’ time at school together. First Sylvia tells Wing she has a crush on her. Wing rejects her, but the two develop a friendship anyway. This friendship skirts the line of romance and Wing herself now has feelings for Sylvia. Their relationship goes from one of almost romance to them definitely dating but simply not defining it as such. This leads to a level of strong emotions that neither girl knows what to do with. The film continues to follow the two over a near ten-year period in which they drift apart.

I’m partial to stories about ill-defined yet emotionally intense teenage relationships. The relationship in this film is somewhat different than other ambiguous friendship narratives I’ve watched. Because I don’t think there’s that much ambiguity. While taking notes during my watch, I wrote that Wing and Sylvia have all the emotional intensity and intimacy of dating, they just don’t kiss. But then they do kiss, and more than once. Notably, they kiss in front of the whole school in the rain. To me, that reads as an obviously romantic relationship. Yet the girls refuse to label it as such. This shows the usefulness that labels can have. Would anything change in their relationship if they called themselves girlfriends? Hard to say. All we know is what the film shows. And what the film shows is an intense, emotional relationship that seems to lack a proper outlet.

In case the kiss in the rain in front of the whole school didn’t give it away, The First Girl I Loved does lean into cliche. The beats of the story are things you could find in many a high school romance or other story of unrequited love. This is where the movie does suffer. It’s too easy to lump it in with a pretty large group of movies. Even if you just lump it in with other queer movies, there’s a lot here that is present in other queer narratives.

The film’s biggest downfall is the visuals. I actually liked them at first. There’s a sunlit, soft filter that permeates every scene. And because much of the film is an emotionally-charged flashback, this initially works. It’s not a remotely groundbreaking visual choice, but an acceptable one. But over time, that sunlit nostalgia filter ends up flattening out the emotion of the film. It’s present whether it’s happy memories or bleak ones about the oppression these girls face. Because I strongly associate the visual style with idealized nostalgia, this choice didn’t work for the film’s more dramatic and tragic moments. I also think the reliance on this one visual filter shows a lack of ambition on part of the director. A lot more could’ve been done with just lighting to tell this story visually. And instead, The First Girl I Loved really operates at one visual setting the whole time.

The First Girl I Loved is a sweet, but unremarkable movie. I did enjoy it, though. Mostly due to the story and because I could personally relate to it. I would describe the movie as “pretty good”, but I’m not certain enough in that opinion to argue it if people disagree. In the category of ambiguous teenage friendship WLW movies, The First Girl I Loved is above average, but not by much. If you’ve seen some other good ones, I don’t think this one has enough quality or originality that I can recommend it to you. But I think there is probably an audience who finds it cathartic to experience multiple stories about what-could-have-been teenage relationships. And I’m not going to warn you away from this one either.

Overall rating: 6.1/10

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