Girls Like Girls

Grade: B-

I had an English teacher in high school who told us that there’s not a boyfriend/girlfriend/crush/prospective love interest in our lives so far that is worth 3 seconds of tears. It may seem like the center of the universe now, but with more life experience in our rear view mirrors, we will look back on these so-called dramas and wonder “why did I even worry about that?” Girls Like Girls will resonate the most with the crowd who is still in the thick of it – the ones who are still in that phase where there’s nothing more important than whether the person they like will feel the same way, or “are they online right now,” or “why did I say that weird thing at the party last night,” etc. if you’re old enough to be significantly removed from those feelings, you might find much of this movie to be making much ado about nothing.

This has been a decade-long journey for writer/director Hayley Kiyoko. This concept began as a music video in 2015, then a novel in 2023, and ultimately became the film we see now. The title has a potential double meaning, with the more obvious interpretation being that some girls are attracted to other girls. It could also signify their perceived need to hide the attraction, and act more like a typical young woman, i.e. Girls [who are] Like [most other] Girls. Leviticus was the last movie I saw before this one. It was a horror allegory with an attraction between two teenage boys at the forefront. Girls Like Girls tackles the same material in a different way – this time, as a summer indie drama. They aren’t quite two sides of the same coin, but rather two similar coins jingle-jangling in the same pocket.

It’s 2006. Sonya (Myra Molloy) introduces the shy Coley (Maya da Costa) into her group of friends. They invite her to the lake for a swim. The self-conscious Coley arrives at the lake but second-guesses her decision to socialize. She is about to leave, when one of the boys picks her up and throws her into the water. Humiliated, she begins to leave, when Sonya catches up to her to apologize. In the process, she shares her AOL Instant Messenger screen name if Coley ever wants to hang out with just her. There isn’t a scene of dialogue this good until near the end. Almost everything in between is a combination of everyone tap-dancing around what they really want to say, with Kiyoko going off on tangents to show off her music video experience.

After a few meaningful “hangs,” Sonya breaks the news to Coley that she has to leave for the rest of the summer. Dance camp. One might be inclined to think “ok, cool. Have a great time, and I’ll see you in a couple of months.” Here, it’s treated as a devastating crushing blow. Matters aren’t helped when Sonya becomes more and more distant with Coley. She doesn’t invite her to get-togethers, and the online communication dwindles.

This is all shown through the lens of the kind of teenager many of us used to be, back when our love lives were as high as the stakes ever got. And in a strange way, it’s one of the things Girls Like Girls gets right. It uses its minimal budget to its advantage, by not having a large cast, other subplots, or even many extras. The challenge is that understanding why these emotions matter to the characters is not always the same thing as finding them compelling to watch for 95 minutes. There isn’t enough material here to sustain a feature. The result is a long middle stretch where the movie keeps circling the same emotional territory without deepening it. The inspired casting choice of Zach Braff as Coley’s dad serves as a bridge, when you remember that 22 years ago, Braff wrote, directed, and starred in Garden State as a character trying to find himself.

After spending the majority of its runtime meandering without committing to any particular point, it’s not until there’s less than 20 minutes to go when it finally clearly locks in on a message. By then, it has already exhausted much of the goodwill it earned early on. The truth is: Sonya really likes Coley. She’d been excluding, avoiding, and ghosting her because she was afraid of how the outside world would receive their love if they were to go public with it. Many people struggled with this in the mid aughts, and unfortunately, many still do now.

The movie makes the interesting and refreshing choice to never use words like “gay,” “homosexual,” “queer,” “lesbian,” “coming out,” or the like. It keeps its terms more general. The film is already plenty treacly, and using those words would veer it even more in the direction of a preachy after school special. I give it credit for not tying everything up neatly and presenting us with a resolution on a silver platter. We get a hint of the direction it will go. They’ll have some figuring out to do, but they’ve at least accepted themselves, and have a blueprint.

I am slightly recommending Girls Like Girls, because for all its aimlessness and flights of fancy, I see promise. There’s something here. Too often, it mistakes mood for momentum and implication for development. As I said, the characters still have a journey of trial and error ahead of them, and so does Kiyoko. I like them enough that I hope, and believe they’ll get there.

Grade: B-