Girls Like Girls

Alive to both the soul connection and the bodily itch of these intimate, unwieldy, personally uncharted feelings, Kiyoko’s uncommonly lovely teen movie matches the dizzy, obsessive ecstasy of the song that inspired it.

Girls Like Girls is a sweet little gem, particularly in how it represents the decade in a warm, naturalistic manner, allowing details like Lipsmackers, CDs, and elastic chokers to read as genuine instead of forced.

Kiyoko keeps a light touch, opting to let the characters’ actions speak for themselves. There’s no preaching here, and I was surprised at how well Coley was written. She’s willing and able to stand up for herself, but she is still a vulnerable teen, full of hormones and emotions, and able to be deeply hurt by the callousness of others.

Kiyoko didn’t come by her fan-given nickname, Lesbian Jesus, for nothing. Like Kiyoko’s videos, the movie wants to create space for romantic deliverance.

As much work as the leads do to breathe life into Coley and Sonya, the story remains a bit vague. Screenwriters Kiyoko and Stefanie Scott gesture towards the girls’ backstories and motivations, but it feels like surface-level character-building instead of deeper insight.

For Girls Like Girls the movie, the final result is less a standalone work of great cinema announcing Kiyoko as a feature director, and more an act of dreamy devotion designed to comfort her core fanbase. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it does change who, and perhaps what, this soulful and peculiar film adaptation is for.

Nothing in Girls Like Girls exists beyond individual feeling, and there are no larger institutions to speak of, not even a school. It all leaves the film stranded in an unsatisfying place: intensely personal yet emotionally unearned, politically gestural yet totally vacant of politics. Kiyoko has made a film obsessed with being seen. It never once learns how to look.