The more I think about this movie the more it crushes me. And it’s the type of movie I know I can watch again in like 10 years and it’ll crush me all over again in a completely different way. It’s pretty well-established at this point that dramatic, extreme trauma often plays too large a role in queer stories, but the less talked about part of this is how more understated forms of trauma, such as strained relationships with your family, are left out of the conversation. That’s what makes this so incredible, it doesn’t bask in misery but it’s not sugarcoated; it avoids making a spectacle of the experience of trans women. Rather than a suffering-filled story leading to some sensationalized violent tragedy, the tragedy instead comes in the raw expressions of emotion Monica has to reserve for moments she’s alone or won’t be heard, in the rift between she and her mother that I think resonates with any trans person who has had to either sacrifice parts of themselves or their relationship with a parent, in the lost time that constantly hangs over all of these relationships. Monica is never reduced to tragedy, or something to be poked and prodded at, or a projection of people’s perceptions of trans women to make them feel good; she’s just a woman, not in a way that erases how her identity shapes her experience, but in a way that isn’t trapped within discourses about that identity that are often engaged by people outside of the community. It felt like a movie written in a language that’s for me rather than about me.
The more I think about this movie the more it crushes me. And it’s the type of movie I know I can watch again in like 10 years and it’ll crush me all over again in a completely different way. It’s pretty well-established at this point that dramatic, extreme trauma often plays too large a role in queer stories, but the less talked about part of this is how more understated forms of trauma, such as strained relationships with your family, are left out of the conversation. That’s what makes this so incredible, it doesn’t bask in misery but it’s not sugarcoated; it avoids making a spectacle of the experience of trans women. Rather than a suffering-filled story leading to some sensationalized violent tragedy, the tragedy instead comes in the raw expressions of emotion Monica has to reserve for moments she’s alone or won’t be heard, in the rift between she and her mother that I think resonates with any trans person who has had to either sacrifice parts of themselves or their relationship with a parent, in the lost time that constantly hangs over all of these relationships. Monica is never reduced to tragedy, or something to be poked and prodded at, or a projection of people’s perceptions of trans women to make them feel good; she’s just a woman, not in a way that erases how her identity shapes her experience, but in a way that isn’t trapped within discourses about that identity that are often engaged by people outside of the community. It felt like a movie written in a language that’s for me rather than about me.
