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.

Beautifully shot and tenderly acted, placing all its faith in pure emotion rather than in overly convoluted twists and turns, this is the sort of gem that feels all the more special for appearing, at first, so ordinary.

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.

Girls Like Girls is a familiar plot, which is part of the point. It's a grounded love story that isn't afraid to make characters messy or deal with trickier subjects, largely executing a painfully realistic story with a good sense of craft. While some elements feel underbaked or seem one-note, the central focus and performances by Myra Molloy and Maya Da Costa give Girls Like Girls an effective emotional core.

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.

The romantic relationship in Girls Like Girls flounders the instant it gets going, however, because Sonya’s hot-and--cold (mostly cold) attitude toward Coley is so confusing and poorly articulated. It seems obvious enough that the invisible enemy here is a hetero disapproval that Sonya can’t quite get past, but Kiyoko doesn’t do enough to identify those pressure points, other than shots of Sonya trying to appease her temperamental boyfriend.

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.

o roteiro desse filme é o puro suco de um clipe estendido e bem chato, cheio de furo e com sérios problemas de montagem e ritmo do início ao fim. a direção da hayley kiyoko tem muita preguiça de construir a conexão delas as cenas dão saltos temporais sem nexo nenhum, mudando de cenário do nada para forçar uma intimidade sem o menor desenvolvimento. enquanto qualquer casal hétero ganha horas de diálogos maduros, aqui o primeiro ato parece uma colagem de momentos aleatórios e sem nexo.(coloquei muitas expectativas quanto a isso affs). o que salva o filme e impede que ele seja um desastre completo é o apelo visual e a química física impecável das duas pós-beijo. o toque, a mão passando e a tensão de quem assiste são absurdos de reais. eu me senti lá dentro enquanto uma tentava fugir e negar tudo e a outra ia atrás. quando o drama da rejeição e os diálogos finalmente chegam, a história ganha a alma que faltava,(n vou negar q n é MT alma n mas passei um pano pra n ficar tão chateada). mesmo com o roteiro capengando para amarrar as pontas é impossível não se identificar com a coly querendo ser (normal) e carregando aquela angústia toda (tudo q ela queria era a Muié dela né) enquanto a sonya simplesmente foge do que sente e some do nada. toda mulher que gosta de mulher já teve medo desses sentimentos e tentou negar em algum momento, e ver a coly tentando se reconstruir depois desse sumiço machuca demais porque é real. você faz um esforço enorme para seguir em frente, mas basta a outra aparecer de novo para tudo desabar. queria muito ter visto isso anos atrás, quando passei o clipe em looping teria sido um divisor de águas. mas ver hoje mesmo com um roteiro fraco e furado, traz um conforto que eu ainda precisava e acolhe sentimentos que ainda moram em mim. no fim a verdade é essa (não dá quando a gente ama uma mulher). mas fazer oq eu amo amar mulheres

It’s genuinely heartening to see how much LGBTQ+ cinema has progressed over the part 30 years. When the genre was new, most of its releases fell into a limited handful of storylines, which, though groundbreaking at the time, have since been surpassed by numerous other works that have moved beyond the basics. And that’s why the debut feature from writer-director Hayley Kiyoko is such a huge disappointment. The film is a rather uninspired throwback more typical of pictures released in this genre in the 1980s, making the material seem quite dated compared to more contemporary offerings. Even though this story takes place in a small town in the first decade of the new millennium – a setting somewhat less progressive than others at that time and certainly much more so than compared to today – it nevertheless comes across like something more akin to LGTBQ+ movies from years earlier. And, to make matters worse, it falls back on a lot of trite story elements and clichés, making this tale of young lesbian love look terribly antiquated. At the risk of playing spoiler, the film follows a shopworn formula for most love stories in general, albeit with a girl-on-girl twist: girl meets girl, girl gets girl, girl loses girl, girl tries to get girl back again. Consequently, it’s difficult to think of that as being in any way original, engaging or different. It also doesn’t help that the screenplay is laden with superficial dialogue, endless montages of cloud shots and bicycle riding footage that feel like padding added to fill out the relatively scant 100 runtime, and a few too many music video-style sequences (something not entirely unexpected, since this is where the director got her filmmaking start). But perhaps the most egregious issue for me was the utter lack of chemistry between the two leads in their attempts to overcome sexual confusion and forge a same-sex relationship. Sonya (Myra Malloy) is a flirtatious but confused tease who can’t make up her mind about which side of the fence she wants to put down roots, and Nicole (“Coley”) (Maya da Costa), the new girl in town, can’t make up her mind about much of anything, a problem made worse by the actress’s inconsistent, positively dreadful performance. Where’s the alleged attraction between these two? Indeed, how is anyone supposed to take any of this seriously? As a gay man myself, I’m well aware of the difficulty involved in coming out (not to mention coming of age as well) as an adolescent (and I did so at a time when it was far more challenge-ridden than it is today and even during the time frame depicted in this film). But its treatment here leaves much to be desired, and it’s a subject that LGBTQ+ cinema really should have moved beyond by now unless special extenuating circumstances are involved in the story (which isn’t the case here). And, because of this, I find it frustrating that there are so many other – and better – works of LGBTQ+ cinema are out there that never get picked up for distribution deals yet something underwhelming like this does (and as a Pride Month release to boot). Girls may like girls, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would realistically like this.

Girls Like Girls feels less like a finished feature film and more like a first draft that somehow made it to release. For a first-time director, there is often an expectation that technical imperfections will be balanced by passion, vision, or a unique perspective. Unfortunately, this film struggles to deliver any of those qualities **** most glaring issue is the lack of directorial control. Scenes frequently feel unfocused, with performances varying wildly in tone and intensity from one moment to the next. Strong direction should guide actors toward believable, emotionally grounded performances. Here, many conversations feel stiff, awkward, and disconnected, as if the cast was never given a clear understanding of the emotional stakes.Pacing is another major problem. The film repeatedly lingers on moments that add little to the story while rushing through key emotional developments that should have formed the foundation of the narrative. As a result, relationships never feel fully earned, conflicts lack impact, and climactic moments arrive without the emotional weight the film clearly intends them to **** screenplay certainly deserves criticism, but a director’s job is to recognize weaknesses in the material and elevate it through performance, visual storytelling, and pacing. Instead, the direction often amplifies the script’s shortcomings. Scenes that should feel intimate become melodramatic. Moments that should feel dramatic become unintentionally flat. The film rarely trusts its audience to interpret emotions naturally and instead relies on obvious cues and repetitive storytelling beats.Visually, there are occasional flashes of competence, but attractive framing alone is not enough to sustain a feature. Many shots feel designed for promotional clips rather than storytelling. The result is a film that often looks polished on the surface while lacking the substance and narrative discipline required to make those images meaningful.Perhaps the harshest criticism is that the film never demonstrates a strong directorial voice. Great debut films often reveal a filmmaker’s unique perspective, even when they are rough around the edges. Girls Like Girls instead feels derivative, chasing familiar coming-of-age tropes without bringing anything fresh or insightful to the genre. The emotional arcs are predictable, the dramatic turns are telegraphed well in advance, and the overall experience becomes increasingly difficult to invest in.A first feature does not need to be perfect. Many great directors began with flawed debuts. The problem here is that the film rarely shows the underlying strengths that suggest greater potential. Rather than feeling like the work of a promising filmmaker finding their footing, it feels like a project that was released before the fundamentals of directing—performance management, pacing, narrative cohesion, and emotional storytelling—had been fully mastered. Final Rating: 0.0/10 Not because the film fails in one area, but because it consistently falls short across writing, directing, pacing, characterization, and emotional execution, resulting in a feature that never justifies the time invested in watching it.