To paraphrase “Girls Like Girls,” the 2015 track by singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko that has now inspired Girls Like Girls, the debut feature by writer-director Hayley Kiyoko, there’s “nothing new” about the story at its heart. There’s nothing unheard of about the premise, which chronicles the attraction between two teenage girls. There’s nothing radical about the filmmaking, replete with intimate close-ups and awash in summer light. Nothing contained within it is likely to blow a viewer’s mind for its unpredictability, or stun them with its originality.
But teen love being “nothing new” hasn’t stopped every generation of adolescents in human existence from feeling, nevertheless, like they’ve stumbled into something unprecedented. It’s that experience — of discovering something you didn’t know you didn’t know, and finding yourself in the process — which Girls Like Girls captures so fully that it comes to seem, in spite of its familiarity, like a tiny revelation.
The plot is so simple that for long stretches, it barely counts as a plot at all. In the summer of 2006, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest — the press notes indicate Oregon, but the stray “U” in a convenience store sign advertising new soda flavors would suggest Canada, where the film was actually shot — shy and sad-eyed Coley (Maya da Costa), who’s just moved in with her dad (Zach Braff‘s Curtis) on the outskirts of town, meets Sonya (Myra Molloy), an effervescent girly girl who runs with the popular crowd.
Despite their opposite personalities, the connection is instant. In no time at all, Sonya and Coley are spending every spare minute of the day biking down tree-lined streets or splashing around in Sonya’s pool or giving each other makeovers, and every evening chatting deep into the night from their respective bedrooms. (Production designer Lindsey Moran has done such a bang-on job reproducing the sights and sounds of the mid-aughts as they would have been experienced by a bored teenage girl that I, a geriatric millennial, felt the urge to run to my nearest CRT monitor whenever Coley’s computer would ring out with the signature bloop of AOL Instant Messenger.)
Girls Like Girls excels at capturing the headiness of young love, from the gravitational pull of a crush’s proximity to the oppressive weight of rejection. Coley may not be much of a chatterbox, but da Costa conveys volumes simply by the way she looks at Sonya, dazed with such longing you sense it takes real physical effort to tear her gaze away. DP Sonja Tyspin’s camera follows her lead, lingering on every lock of Sonya’s hair or flutter of her fingers against Jessica Rose Weiss’ dreamy score. (Somewhat surprisingly for a film by a musician, Kiyoko’s own songs are used sparingly throughout.)
Da Costa, though, is only half the equation. As Sonya’s initial warmth (she “has a thing for strays,” scoffs her boorish boyfriend, played by Levon Hawke) gives way to deeper sentiment, Molloy’s performance, too, grows more layered and complex. If her attraction to Coley — her first real crush, we gather — marks a coming of age, it also brings out a youthful innocence. Hesitancy creeps into her normally confident persona. It’s one thing to casually throw your legs over a friend’s in the backseat of a crowded car when the energy is platonic; it’s another, much more fraught thing to do so when you’ve begun to realize it isn’t.
Girls Like Girls is sparing about the details that make up the rest of the girls’ lives, offering only vague hints as to Sonya’s relationships with the other pals who wander in and out of frame, or Coley’s social life in her old hometown, or their goals and passions outside of each other. But the chemistry between Molloy and da Costa, as easy and inevitable as nature, is more than strong enough to make up for those limitations. When they’re together, nothing else needs to make sense since nothing else matters.
Naturally, the course of true love never does run smooth in the movies, because there would be no movie if it did. Refreshingly, the script (credited to Kiyoko, Chloe Okuno and Stefanie Scott) refrains from throwing some harrowing external obstacle into their path. Instead, the girls’ biggest hurdle to happiness comes from within. As their friendship turns romantic, Sonya — a go-along-to-get-along type who’s unprepared to embrace this queer relationship for what it is — starts to distance herself.
Coley’s subsequent heartbreak is as raw as her infatuation once was, and is amplified further by an unrelated sorrow. As revealed in bits and pieces, she’s come to stay with her semi-estranged dad following the death of her beloved but unstable mother; Sonya’s abandonment is thus the latest blow for a girl already struggling to recover from the last one. But despite Braff’s quietly lovely performance as a man who earnestly wants to be there for his daughter but doesn’t quite know how, their familial bond isn’t quite fleshed out enough to land as much more than a footnote to Coley’s romantic drama.
Perhaps that’s as it should be. First loves have a way of swallowing their participants whole, and that part, Girls Like Girls gets exactly right. 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.
