The 52: Miss
From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.
Two weeks in a row I get a film I’d happily- no, I'd push to rewatch? To show others? To talk about unprompted? After Ellie and Abbie (and Ellie’s Dead Aunt) I wouldn’t have been surprised if the next film didn’t hit the mark, Ellie and Abbie was really good, but Miss? Miss didn’t miss.
This film comes up against Ellie and Abbie in more ways than one, because my stars did it have a killer soundtrack. The scene where a fleet of Miss France hopefuls pose before a rubbish station while No Roots played was iconic and there were just so many good moments throughout where the music was chosen cleverly and with utter perfection for the scene.
Miss knew what it was doing and it did it well.
Telling the story of Alex, who lives in an eclectic and busy house with a bunch of other people and works at a local boxing... place... (ring? Studio...?), and whose only wish is to become Miss France, a wish that is soon deeply supported by the people who care for Alex. And my goodness, it's beautiful to watch.
There were unexpected stumbling blocks I came to face with storytelling of this film, however, aspects that hit hard in enlightening but utterly off-guard ways, predominately this: "she was so harsh because she believed you could do better."
I was once in the same position, where I was treated with more strictness, my actions scrutinised in ways I felt unfair, because a peer believed in my ability to do better. With Alex, with any of these situations in storytelling, I feel like we’re meant have a moment of aah, I see, you made things better because of your hardness, and yet it is a trope that will always rile me because we are humans. We hurt. We’re soft. If you push us hard enough, we just might break and surely telling someone they are extraordinary, that they are already proof of that, will hurt so much less than harsh words and constant reprimands. In Miss I thought it was done well quite well, for all that, I followed the plot of the story and understood, but I also felt it touch on old wounds of my own that were suddenly tender.
One thing I will say, and I fear this is a trend that mimics society’s own ignorance: there’s so little understanding of what gender identity means. The understanding of what a drag queen is vs a trans person is something people don’t seem interested in learning the difference between, and it shows. Miss doesn’t always hit the mark in this realm, and at times notably fails to; Alex’s mentor and friend is a drag queen and prostitute and her own comprehension of who Alex is and why Alex wants this is flawed, as is the understanding of almost all those closest to Alex. I wish they had delved deeper into exploring gender and identity, although perhaps Alex's comfort with fludity was enough. Perhaps it did not need further explaination.
Miss was a really, really good film. Simultaneously light and weighted with meaning, funny and clever, it tells an important story and in the end, despite stumbling blocks it might have set in its way, it tells it very, very well, with a final scene that left me still, quiet and proud.
There’s a beautiful connection between the actor and the character and I feel like the casting is just so perfect for this role, with Alexandre Wetter speaking on gender and identity really expressively in this interview. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about their statement on not wanting sexuality/gender identity to be a cause or political- in an ideal world it wouldn't be either, but in the current landscape where people are attacked, legislature is often rooted in homophoibia and transphobia and the safety of the LGBTQIA+ commiunity is at risk every day... it seems a little flawed.
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