jenniolson

A wonderful film that is moving and smart and funny and really just has so much heart. Maryam Keshavarz is an exceptionally talented writer-director and it's amazing how this script (based on her own life - including the key plot of a lesbian/bisexual filmmaker who sleeps with a man and gets pregnant and decides to have the baby) moves along so beautifully to paint a complex familial mother-daughter portrait which is also wonderfully cinematic, energetic and entertaining. Particularly strong performances from Layla Mohammadi as Keshavarz's alter-ego lead character Leila and from Niousha Noor as her mother Shireen (also an amazing turn from unknown newcomer Kamand Shafieisabet as young Shireen). The ambitious scope of the narrative - culturally, historically, politically - is truly impressive and it is not surprising the film won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award on its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

This is a complex, original, sophisticated and beautifully made film by a transman director and a cis lesbian writer that has so much to contribute to dialogue in the queer community in this particular moment when we all need to be having nuanced conversations rather than reactionary shut-downs. While the plot sounds problematic on its surface - a straight cis male teen ends up having a relationship with a lesbian who believes he is a transman - the film is very clearly offering up commentary on all kinds of issues and themes within the queer community and it is neither transphobic nor lesbophobic. It is really so unfortunate to see such a vicious campaign being waged against it by people who have not actually seen the film.

Have not seen this in a long time but my memory is that it is not as funny as it could be. Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts go to a Turkish bath where they endure various craziness including being attacked by two women with vibrators. In the end, having lost their clothes, they escape together arm in arm with Thelma in a sheet and Zasu wearing a man's suit.