The 52: Alex Strangelove
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.
For the first ten minutes I kept pausing to send my friend voice notes, detailing the way Alex compares kids in his school to animals, because this is literally a scene: she was like this ugly ass bird, because she was ugly... but then she came back to highschool after summer and was hot, and so is the bird when it flies
Alex Strangelove was a very peculiar film. There's this moment where Alex is in the process of revealing his name and for a second all of it - or at least some of it! - made sense! His name is Strangelov- no. It’s Truelove. Why is the film called Alex Strangelove? Beats me. (I now wonder if the fact he's anything but straight makes him strange in love, but surely not, because that would be a little blatant for anyone to go ahead with, wouldn't it?)
In Alex we meet a teenager who is in a longterm relationship, a guy who is happy, who is best friends with his girlfriend and has, it seems, never questioned his sexuality. He struggles with the idea of intimacy and it is quickly revealed his girlfriend, who seems cool but is actually a pretty shitty person, has been wanting them to have sex for ages but he’s ~not into it~ a fact she openly states in front of his friends with no preamble. Seeing this pressure for sex felt authentic, the miscommunication around wants and desire, having a group of friends who don’t know what they’re doing, the weight of expectation - I felt that, and I only wish it had been delved into more.
It’s joked early on that Alex must be gay, since he doesn’t want to have sex, and this was definitely an issue that was reflective of the whole movie: bisexuality, pansexuality, anything other than straight or gay is glossed over fairly quickly, a single conversation before the film darts on to what feels like it’s true narrative, and such a trope is so very tiresome. Certainly not every guy who’s dated girls or girl who’s dated guys must fit into a bi or pan spectrum, but the dismissal of even questioning anything other than ~completely straight~ or ~entirely gay~ felt shitty.
Alex isn’t a particularly likeable character, and the antics and personalities of his friends were equally tiresome, making for a movie that was very much a background watch (or as much a “background watch” as I’ll allow myself with The 52- in this sense I just crafted the whole time, paying attention but not the attention I give films of a higher caliber).
I want more. Is it so much to ask that that more is also good?
Like things shorter? Follow me on Letterboxd and see my review
Comments
Post a Comment