Given the cultural context of the 20th and early 21st centuries, it’s no wonder that the majority of queer films call for tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community at a time when that community has been subject to bigotry, hostility, and even outright violence.
But there have always been filmmakers who aren’t interested in putting on a noble front for straight people or telling a story that pleads for tolerance from non-queer viewers.
Case in point: Emma Seligman’s high-school comedy Bottoms, a movie more interested in the tradition of presenting teenagers as selfish, obnoxious, and horny, with the possibility that, over the course of the film, they might learn to be less selfish and obnoxious while having their horniness at least slightly sated. That the teenagers here are lesbians, but no less loutish than generations of hormonal straight-dude protagonists, plays as boldly outrageous, as does just about everything else in this wonderfully weird comedy, which constantly defies both genre and expectations.
Brash, mouthy PJ (co-writer Rachel Sennott) is convinced that the new school year offers an opportunity to start fresh, one that will allow her and her best friend Josie (Ayo Edebiri, Theater Camp) the opportunity to finally hook up with their respective crushes, Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). Josie’s more dubious about the prospect, given that she and PJ are referred to at their school, even by the principal, as “the ugly, untalented gays.”
When PJ and Josie come to Isabel’s defense against her boyfriend — football star Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine, Red, White and Royal Blue), the gridiron-obsessed school’s worship object — the girls are nearly expelled. PJ then spins a yarn about starting a self-defense class/fight club for her female classmates to defend themselves against a worrisomely violent rival school. Her real agenda is, of course, to get laid, but if that means taking a few punches in the face for the sisterhood, so be it. (Editor Hanna Park and the stunt team succeed in making all those punches look quite real.)
It’s a mad scheme destined to spin wildly out of control, especially with Jeff’s teammate Tim (Miles Fowler, HBO’s Winning Time) keeping a scheming eye on the fight club and looking for any opportunity to sow dissension. But when PJ and Josie hit rock bottom, even turning on each other, the Big Game that’s a staple of any sports-minded high-school movie provides an opportunity for redemption, particularly when the exhortation to “kill” the rival team isn’t mere hyperbole.
Many is the Hollywood comedy that opens on a brash and shocking note, only to temper itself by the final act — whether through studio notes or creative timidity — into something safe and palatable. But it’s the ones that choose chaos and stay there all the way to the closing credits that remain in the memory and garner new generations of fans. (Heathers may be the reigning champ of the anarchic high-school comedy, but John Waters has built a whole career on this brand of brashness.)
Seligman and Sennott, reteaming after Shiva Baby, clearly know the beats and tropes of the teen comedy while taking every opportunity to subvert the formula. Bottoms always opts for the weirdest choices and least expected outcomes, whether it’s the toilet-papering of a yard escalating to a car-bombing or a supposedly sage adult — former NFL star Marshawn Lynch as a semi-attentive and comically self-involved school teacher tricked into becoming the fight club’s faculty advisor — who offers no useful wisdom whatsoever.
While retaining the dark humor of her feature debut, Seligman asserts herself further behind the camera; Shiva Baby was practically a theater piece, with a series of conversations staged in rooms or on sidewalks, while Bottoms requires lots of complex moving parts and set pieces. She’s broadened the scope of her filmmaking without diluting her wonderfully wicked sensibilities, particularly her talent for directing actors. Once again, she’s got a crack (and cracked) comic cast, from Sennott and Edebiri’s hilarious rapport to an ensemble that utterly commits to the absurdity at hand. (Fans of the 90s cartoon Daria will appreciate the fact that the football players spend their every school day in uniform, pads and all.)
Heterosexual teenagers on the big screen have long had the opportunity to be inappropriate and misguided in their attempts to lose their virginity, and Bottoms offers up a new generation of teen lesbians willing to be just as stupid and awful to get a little action. That might not be what LGBTQ+ political leaders have in mind when they call for equality, but it’s welcome all the same.
Director: Emma Seligman
Screenwriters: Emma Seligman & Rachel Sennott
Cast: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicolas Galitzine, Dagmara Dominczyk, Marshawn Lynch
Producers: Elizabeth Banks, Max Handelman, Alison Small
Executive producer: Ted Deiker
Director of photography: Maria Rusche
Production design: Nate Jones
Costume design: Eunice Lee
Editing: Hanna Park
Music: Charli XCX & Leo Birenberg
Sound: Andrea Bella, sound designer
Production companies: Orion Pictures, Brownstone Productions
In English
92 minutes
