She Monkeys
Director: Lisa Ahscan
Actors: Isabella Lindquist, Kevin Caicedo Vega, Linda Molin, Mathilda Paradeiser
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Drama
Running time: 83 minutes
You wait ages for an arthouse gay coming of age drama and two come along at once. And both of them crap. Coming hot on the heels of last week's disappointing Dutch drama North Sea Texas is this Swedish lesbian outing. And before you get all in a dizzy, boys, this Swedish lesbian teen gymnast movie is not like 'that' at all.
Emma Watson lookalike Mathilda Paradeiser is Emma, a daughter to single parent and older sister to seven-year-old Sara (Lindquist). Emma wants to be on the local voltige team and not just because she has the hots for the blonde bad egg Cassandra (Molin), who knows exactly what she'd doing when she stretches in 'that way' in her bathing suit as Emma watches on. As both girls summon the courage to blurt out their feelings, little Sara fights her dad for a bikini so she will look more grown up when her crush, her teen cousin Sebastian (Vega), comes to babysit.
The poster looks cool. Pasadeiser (now looking like Chloe Sevigny), rifle in hand, stares blankly out at you, daring you to call her something. That's not She-Monkeys, though. That's a different movie altogether and it looks like a better one. You know a movie is moving slowly when you check your watch three times in eighty-three minutes. She-Monkeys is a drab, dull and monotonous flick.
Making her debut, writer-director Lisa Ahscan boasts real restraint and sensitivity in a film that could have been anything but. She does come close to pushing buttons in one awkward scene when Sara dances for Sebastian and asks him to scratch her stomach. It's unclear, though, what Ahscan is saying about Sara's demanding of the leopard-printed bikini and the sexualisation of children. And why Sebastian has to babysit at all. And where's mum and why isn't she mentioned? And why... ah, screw it.
The performances are the best thing going for it – newcomers Molin and Paradeiser are impressive but it's young Lindquist who runs away with the heart of the movie despite being the subplot.
