Monica Zanetti’s brand new movie is distinctively Australian without getting irritating about this, steering free from tropes and bringing some big laughs
Ellie & Abbie celebrates love that is queer, familial, and intergenerational – in most its difference. Photograph: Cinema Australia.There are a couple of love tales in Monica Zanetti’s queer teen romcom, Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt).
One, needless to say, may be the romance that is budding Sydney high schoolers Ellie and Abbie. One other could be the affection that is intergenerational respect and solidarity that develops between these teens in addition to queers that arrived before them – in specific, Ellie’s lesbian aunt Tara, who passed away when you look at the 80s well before Ellie came to be. The two narratives wind around each other in a sweet and daggy dual helix.
Sophie Hawkshaw plays Ellie, a swotty college captain whoever closest friend is her mum (a harried and hilarious Marta Dusseldorp). Ellie is enthusiastic about trite Instagram affirmations about asking the world to manifest abundance, and much more so along with her puckish yet interestingly earnest classmate Abbie (played by nonbinary actor Zoe Terakes), who’s currently serving per week in detention for calling the main the C-word.
After Ellie happens to her mum, her aunt Tara (Julia Billington) comes home through the dead being a “fairy godmother” to simply help guide her in woman-loving ways. But there’s a bit of culture surprise on both edges: Tara’s unsolicited and anachronistic dating advice revolves around references to KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge, while Ellie contends that she does not need any assistance because “there’s like five other gay children during my year”. She reckons she’s fine. with no distinctive from other people.
Ellie’s residing aunt that is lesbian family members buddy Patty (the iconic Rachel home, whom you would understand from pretty much every Taika Waititi movie), does not do better at taking care of Ellie’s tender feelings, though she does give a hot, cut-the-crap presence into the family members’s life.
Ellie and Abbie trailer
Zanetti, who penned and directed the movie, cleverly plays because of the indisputable fact that our predecessors that are queer the way in which for exactly how we reside now, but as people could be just like bumbling and away from touch as other people in hornywife dating site terms of dealing with teens. We might idolise OWLs (“older wiser lesbians”) but they’re only flightless, bug-eyed people all things considered. And besides, also in the generation that is same every person’s experience is extremely various, as Ellie and Abbie’s tales expose. We don’t immediately “get it” unless we decide to try.
The romcom format enables the movie to explore these tensions that are different teasing fondness. Both love stories need to hurdle over crossed cables and missed connections, and they’re offered humour and heart. In specific, the real comedy brings some big laughs that balance the weightier areas of the storyline, although the banter between Abbie and Ellie deserves to drop in the history for the romcom genre. There were a number of lesbian films marketed as comedies in the past few years (Duck Butter; The Feels) which can be kind of low-key whimsical without actually being funny you laugh and even snort a little bit so it’s a relief to find one that actually makes. Bridie Connell is a standout right right here while the extremely strung schoolteacher skip Trimble, while Terakes provides equal components dweeb and heartthrob since the conscientious delinquent love interest that is equestrian. It’s a charmingly particular character i’ve never ever seen before within the infinite yearbook of senior high school film types.
Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes in Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt). Photograph: Nixco
Early in the day this current year, Ellie & Abbie had been initial Australian movie to start Mardi Gras movie event, plus it’s impressed audiences at other festivals across the nation, including this month’s Melbourne Queer movie event. The movie is distinctively Australian without having to be irritating about any of it. Particularly regarding the well-trod turf of teenager movies, where in fact the hegemonic american school that is high casts a lengthy shadow, it is refreshing to see a tale that plays to your familiar skills for the genre without diluting its feeling of spot to ensure it is more palatable international. The movie clearly nods to Hollywood on occasion – there’s a cheeky mention of The Breakfast Club, as well as in one very very early scene an instructor chides the pupils for calling their formal a “prom” – but primarily the storyline simply provides a glimpse of Australian adolescence, full of L-plates and F-words, without contrasting it against whatever else.
The script shows the finesse that is same composing queer life as one thing rich and distinctive; perhaps not as opposed to a heterosexual norm, but nevertheless unique and significant. Certainly one of my pet peeves that are biggest in movie and tv could be the trope for the character or relationship that “just so takes place become gay”, which people utilize as a shorthand to explain narratives that aren’t entirely defined by their queerness, but which in fact does the alternative, building queer tales for a right mould and determining them by their departure from heteronormativity. Alternatively, Ellie & Abbie celebrates love that is queer, familial, and intergenerational – in most its difference. It’s good, it is various, plus it’s wonderful.