Nonbinary teen leads coming-of-age family drama
To love and be loved. To have hope for the future. To be comfortable living an authentic self. To feelby family and friends. For many queer folks, that’s the stuff of adulthood, postponed by bigotry and hate. Ben De Backer, a nonbinary teen, feels like they will never know that joy., Ben comes out to their parents, not knowing they would wind up on the streets in the middle of the night for doing so. Desperate, Ben calls their estranged older sister Hannah to pick them up.
Still, the script hits the essential beats of the high school dramedy. There’s the outgoing first friend, Nathan , who prods Ben to break out of their shell. Under Nathan’s wing, Ben is introduced to two artsy types, Meleika and Sophie , cultivating a support system. And in a quintessential queer mentor role, Lena Dunham plays the empathetic art-teacher-slash-therapist who inspires Ben to release their misplaced guilt.
What Dorfman and company achieve here is the laying of a new groundwork for the queer cinematic language. With a soundtrack of legendary trans and nonbinary icons including Sophie and Shamir, a tasteful amount of generational slang – “It’s giving they/them,” Nathan quips – and a gaze that’s both honest and uplifting,feels refreshing given the expanding landscape for queer representation.
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