First Girl I Loved
The high school coming-of-age drama got a much-needed jolt in the arm earlier this year with Kelly Fremon Craig’s excellent (and woefully underrated) The Edge of Seventeen. Giving the genre another exciting boost is Kerem Sanga’s First Girl I Loved, a winning queer high school drama that was justly a big hit at last year’s Sundance Festival. Bolstered by a palette of truly wonderful performances and an impressive sense of artistic flair, First Girl I Loved is an affecting exploration of teenage queerness and desire that deserves a significantly larger audience than the one it’ll likely receive (the film is going out in a really limited release in Australia).
17-year old Anne (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s Dylan Gelula) is an arty yearbook photographer and editor. She spends most of her time hanging out with her best (and only) friend, Clif (Mateo Arias). After photographing a school softball match, she becomes enamoured with Sasha (Deadpool’s Brianna Hildebrand), an athletic softball player that is basically everything Anne is not. She reveals her feelings to Clif, who, to say the least, doesn’t take it very well (he himself has a thing for Anne). Feeling somewhat alone, Anne attempts to spark fireworks with Sasha, who may or may not feel the same way towards her.
First Girl I Loved stands out from your average teen drama thanks to its unconventional narrative structure; one that frequently jumps to different points in the story. Initially, this feels a little jarring and comes across as somewhat of a pretentious attempt at adding a sense of artiness to it for the sake of it (the film’s candy coloured title font and pulsing synth score reminded me, weirdly, of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers). As we descend further into the complex world of these characters, however, this structure comes to feel like the appropriate way to tell this story. Through this approach, Sanga perfectly captures the feelings of fear, confusion, joy and love that this pivotal period of growing up brings along with it. The focus isn’t so much on plot as it is on how the characters’ deal and react to these particular emotions. Sanga’s sympathetic approach to his characters makes something as mundane as a conversation over text completely thrilling. Our investment comes from the fact that we are discovering more about these characters just as much as they are themselves.
It helps massively that Sanga is armed with a terrific cast who really tap into the depths of these characters. Sasha’s insecurities and fears are conveyed with great nuance by Brianna Hildebrand. Sasha initially seems like the more confident one out of the two, but as you get closer, you realise that she is perhaps just as lost as Anne is, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. It makes you wish that more films of this type would tap into those complexities as well as this film does. As excellent as Hildebrand is, though, it’s absolutely the Dylan Gelula show. Oh boy, what a performance. Following through on the great promise she showed on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Gelula is absolutely revelatory here. It’s no easy feat to carry almost a whole film on your shoulders, but Gelula does it brilliantly. It’s a true thrill to sit back and watch a young actor portray a character exploring herself as she explores her own self as an actor.
While the film is genuinely affecting throughout, by film’s end, you can’t help but feel a slight sense of disappointment that it never quite soars into anything more than perfectly solid. Admirably, it touches on themes of consent and homophobia; two issues that absolutely do need more discussion in films aimed at a young adult audience. But it never really seems to say anything worthwhile about said issues. It gets caught up in touching on multiple issues, but never quite delving deeper into them, instead of descending into slight melodrama in its climax (something it deftly avoided throughout the rest of the film). It’s all well and good to shine a light on them, but if you’re not actually saying much with it, then what’s the point? This prevents it from becoming something truly magnificent. It’s the tiniest bit frustrating because for the majority of the film, First Girl I Loved held my attention unsparingly. A film hasn’t captured the conflicting feelings of teenage emotions this well in…well, I can’t even remember. For that, I can more than recommend it. Perhaps there is more at subtle play here than I realise. It may not come to the grand conclusion you want it to, but First Girl I Loved is a coming-of-age film with spice that is well worth your time.