‘Girls Like Girls’ Serves Up Queer Longing and Early Aughts Nostalgia
Ah, the teenage experience. Something we can’t wait to escape while it happens, but are so eager to recapture it once it’s gone. Few films really tap into this sense of immediacy and fleeting time, but Girls Like Girls is one of them.
Like most teen films, it’s a coming-of-age story practically by its very nature, full of familiar trappings. 17-year-old Coley (Maya da Costa) is heartbreakingly vulnerable as the new girl in a small town, freshly transplanted after losing her mother, and quickly discovers new depths of feeling when she connects with local golden girl Sonya (Myra Molloy).
After directing many of her own music videos, including the 2015 music video and penning the 2023 book, pop star and actress Hayley Kiyoko again reveals a singular talent as she makes her feature directorial debut for this tender story, whose 2006 setting and its now downright whimsical technological trappings (AIM messenger! RIP iPods!) nevertheless speak to the universality of Coley’s journey to love herself. Nostalgia notwithstanding, the early aughts weren’t exactly friendly ground for two young women to explore their sexuality, especially not with each other.
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The presence of Kiyoko alone, a longtime lesbian icon and activist, is almost guaranteed that there’s no room for fetishization here, and there’s two other female writers for backup. The leads also have the type of chemistry that piles on the yearning, from that aching first look to the tender budding of a passionate relationship that they must disguise as teen bonding.
The reason why is pretty much embodied by Sonya’s boyfriend Trenton (Levon Hawke). He’s the kind of toxic guy a friend group tends to make excuses for, the somewhat charismatic, usually good-looking dude whose toxic masculinity is uneasily brushed off as a bad joke. But he’s also savvy enough to know when he’s not the center of things, openly disdainful of Coley from their first meeting, casually homophobic, and noticeably discomforted by her growing closeness with Sonya.
The more positive man in Coley’s life is also part of the millennial nostalgia bait, with Zach Braff stepping up as her estranged but well-meaning father, who is thrust into parenting at the time when it tends to be hardest. He can’t prevent some of Coley’s self-destructive behavior that’s hardly a surprise given so many hints that her first love will be hand in hand with heartache, but Braff ends up giving one of his most tender performances as a man who is desperate to reconnect with the daughter he hardly knows.
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With so much pain lingering on the margins, the gentle immersion into all the messy pangs of a love that dare not speak its name, and all the confusion and fear it engenders, is all the more wrenching for its visual dive into the visual language these girls learn to connect in spite of it all. When Sonya dances for Coley in her room, it’s the kind of ordinary beauty that lives in a head rent free, and when they dare to voice their feelings, it also kicks off a push and pull between how they are seen and who they actually are.
Rooting for this flawed pair of star-crossed lovers is so easy one can forget that it may also be beside the point, an odd thing to say about a love story so beautifully told. Through their bond, both girls have learned who they are and what they need; the only question is whether they’ll follow through. Stay after the credits for their epilogue, but Girls Like Girls proved it was worth the wait long before.
Grade: A-
