Bottoms
Our default frame of reference for teen films still clings to the carapace of the John Hughes era — which rightfully acknowledges the seismic shift in point of view that those films represented, but doesn’t really reckon with how rooted they were in preserving the status quo (e.g., upper- middle-class, heteronormative white people experiences). So it’s exciting when something like Bottoms comes along, committed to underdogs of all sorts and turning accepted modes of discourse on their ass. Director and co-writer Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby) has a knack for exploring the facets of traditional narratives that often get shunned, and she’s so far done so on her own terms, which is gloriously refreshing.
If Bottoms were a regular movie, football star Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine, from Red, White and Royal Blue) would be the hero, and we’d be treading water until his reunion with Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) despite his habitual infidelity and crippling pineapple allergy. Josie (Ayo Edibiri, from seemingly everything) and PJ (co-writer Rachel Sennott, from Bodies Bodies Bodies and Shiva Baby) would maybe get two-and-a-half scenes in the background. But their yearning queer hearts would be consigned to liminal subtext, instead of allowed to claim space as the rightfully horny protagonists.
The fact that these two channel their sexual frustration into violence — well, that’s something every school with a football team has been doing for decades and decades. But the fact that they are women who are also into women — that somehow is something that bureaucracy doesn’t know how to deal with, because it just gets more and more apparent every day that any kind of identity that makes the establishment have to reevaluate its traditions is just too much for established society to bear. Understand that this film is violent in a way that may alienate some viewers — but it’s also honest about the casual violence in every American school*, and it doesn’t pull its punches.
Thankfully, these are resourceful young lesbians, and they (for the most part) have Marshawn Lynch on their side. I know nothing of sports (barring the 1999 PGA, because I watched that with my grandfather when he was dying from cancer), but the former Seahawks running back is one of the funniest people alive on the planet right now. And he’s the faculty sponsor for PJ and Josie’s plan to start a self-defense class to allow young women to access their power and all sorts of agency — you know the kind I mean. It’s a complicated world, and there’s an anarchic freedom to the society these women are building that can’t help but be exhilarating. Not just for queer youth, or those who were once queer youth. But for anyone who could have used another way.
*The author is addressing K-12 schools from 1981 to 1993. Seligman is 20 years younger, but it still feels accurate. There are teachers — good ones — who will read this and be horrified, but the truth is there was never anything they could have done. The system depends on threat energy; just ask all the queer kids who get suspended or expelled for defending themselves against bullying.
