Critic Reviews

One of the most compelling things about Karem Sanga’s raw and emotionally radiant First Girl I Loved is how well it captures the heart-pounding terror of becoming someone, the one-way nausea of committing to yourself.

Sanga’s roundabout storytelling and sensitive exploration of contemporary issues around sexual identity and consent makes First Girl I Loved a sophisticated and complex teenage coming of age story. It’s Gelula’s performance that brings the emotional weight necessary to drive the story forward.

The way the narrative starts and stops and doubles back mirrors the characters’ own confusion. We try to make sense of the story along with them — who did what, said what, when, and what did it really mean.

What writer and director Kerem Sanga captures so well in First Girl I Loved is high school. What he captures even better is falling in love, or the naïve idea of what it means to be in love as a teenager.

This watchable but middling drama tackles a worthy, relatable subject without quite figuring out what to say about it.

A small, sympathetic story of a teenage girl’s rough coming out is smothered by a pile of far-fetched melodrama, a loathsomely obnoxious male lead character and far too much unsteadicam visual randomness in First Girl I Loved.