Monica Zanetti’s film that is new distinctively Australian without having to be irritating about any of it, steering away from tropes and bringing some big laughs
Ellie & Abbie celebrates queer love intimate, familial, and intergenerational – in every its distinction. Photograph: Cinema Australia.There are a couple of love stories in Monica Zanetti’s queer teen romcom, Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt).
One, needless to say, may be the budding relationship between Sydney high schoolers Ellie and Abbie. One other may be the intergenerational love, respect and solidarity that develops between these teens therefore the queers that arrived before them – in specific, Ellie’s lesbian aunt Tara, whom passed away into the 80s a long time before Ellie was created. 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 abundance that is manifest and much more so along with her puckish yet interestingly earnest classmate Abbie (played by nonbinary actor Zoe Terakes), who’s presently serving per week in detention for calling the main the C-word.
After Ellie arrives to her mum, her aunt Tara (Julia Billington) comes home through the dead as 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 advice that is dating around references to KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge, while Ellie contends that she does not require any assistance because “there’s like five other homosexual young ones during my year”. She reckons she’s fine. and no distinct from other people.
Ellie’s residing lesbian aunt, household friend Patty (the iconic Rachel home, whom you would understand from almost every Taika Waititi movie), does not do better at shopping for Ellie’s tender emotions, though she does give a hot, cut-the-crap existence into the family members’s life.
Ellie and Abbie trailer
Zanetti, whom published and directed the movie, cleverly plays aided by the indisputable fact that our predecessors that are queer just how for exactly how we reside now, but as people could be in the same way bumbling and away from touch as someone else in terms of coping with teens. We might idolise OWLs (“older wiser lesbians”) but they’re only flightless, bug-eyed people most likely. And besides hindu faces x review, also in the exact same generation, every person’s experience is extremely various, as Ellie and Abbie’s tales reveal. We don’t immediately “get it” unless we take to.
The romcom structure enables the movie to explore these tensions that are different teasing fondness. Both love stories need certainly to hurdle over crossed cables and missed connections, and they’re served with heart and humour. The heavier parts of the story, while the banter between Abbie and Ellie deserves to go down in the annals of the romcom genre in particular, the physical comedy brings some big laughs that balance. There has been a number of lesbian films marketed as comedies in the past few years (Duck Butter; The Feels) which are kind of low-key whimsical without actually being funny so that it’s a relief to find one which actually makes you laugh and even snort a bit. Bridie Connell is really a standout right here due to the fact very strung schoolteacher skip Trimble, while Terakes provides equal components dweeb and heartthrob while the conscientious delinquent equestrian love interest. It’s a charmingly certain character i’ve never ever seen before within the endless yearbook of senior high school film kinds.
Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes in Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt). Photograph: Nixco
Early in the day in 2010, Ellie & Abbie ended up being the very first film that is australian start Mardi Gras movie event, plus it’s impressed audiences at other festivals round the nation, including this month’s Melbourne Queer movie event. The movie is distinctively Australian without getting irritating about any of it. Specially from the well-trod turf of teenager movies, in which the hegemonic US senior high school experience casts a lengthy shadow, it is refreshing to see a story that plays to your familiar talents regarding 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, plus in one very early scene an instructor chides the pupils for calling their formal a “prom” – but primarily the tale simply provides a glimpse of Australian adolescence, full of L-plates and F-words, without contrasting it against other things.
The script shows the finesse that is same composing queer life as something rich and distinctive; maybe perhaps perhaps not as opposed to a heterosexual norm, but nevertheless unique and meaningful. Certainly one of my pet peeves that are biggest in movie and tv may be the trope for the character or relationship that “just so takes place become gay”, which people utilize being a shorthand to explain narratives that aren’t entirely defined by their queerness, but that actually does the exact opposite, building queer tales for a right mould and defining them by their departure from heteronormativity. Alternatively, Ellie & Abbie celebrates love that is queer, familial, and intergenerational – in most its distinction. It’s good, it is various, plus it’s wonderful.