The 52:
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.
TW: School shooting
Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler are the powerhouse pairing I never knew existed.
The Fallout follows the life of teenager Vada after what her therapist calls “the event” - a school shooting that has left her at a standstill, unable to voice or comprehend the way she feels and the fact she is still alive when so many of her schoolmates aren’t.
I tried to watch this through the eyes of a parent and a teenager and a human, an experience that was full of conflict and pain - because you want to understand the ways to help your child when they are obviously suffering, and you want Vada to live in these soft moments of happiness she finds with Mia, who she lived through every second of the shooting alongside, and you wish everyone had the words to express something that there aren’t any words to express. Unfathomable pain amidst growing up, the trauma of an experience no one should have and too many do.
We watch as Vada's best friend reacts to the shooting by becoming an activist, reliving and retelling his experience so no one else has to go through it again, seeing Vada's guilt - and the judgement, subtle or outright, of the people around her - at not being able to turn her experience into activism, even though we as viewers know there is no guilt to be felt at that.
Her friendship, and eventual relationship with Mia is… such a strength to the film. Together these two are incredible and have a genuine magic on screen. These actors aren’t a pairing I would have ever considered, but I hope they work together again; their performances were strong and emotional and genuine, raw and damn, I’m using all the film critic words when I just want to say they were a bloody powerhouse duo.
It was really good to watch a film with a bi/pan protagonist (Vada never talks about her sexuality, just experiences it). Vada forms strong connections with both Mia and Quinton, the three of them experiencing the shooting primarily together, and as a viewer I simultaneously understood how their friendship grew from the experience they shared, that attraction grew from that friendship, and wished Vada gave herself time to heal rather than trying to turn both those friendships into relationships.
The Fallout is a hard watch, but I do think it’s an important one- and a well done one at that.
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