Happy Pride! Kicking off my Movies With Pride this year is an Independent Spirit Award Nominee, She’s The He, which bounced around some film festivals before securing a release date right at the beginning of Pride month. This LGBTQ comedy won over audiences with its witty banter, trans positive story, and winning cast. If you think you’ve seen it all, you’ll be surprised.
Ethan and Alex are best friends. They are super close, almsot too close. Alex has even developed quite an advanced rapport with Ethan’s mom. But, for some reason, the school has pictured them as a gay couple, which is a concept they want to run so far from, they instead both come out at trans. Imagine a world where it is better to tell the world you’re trans than gay. The absurdist premise then has the boys committing to the bit, and making a new set of friends. But as Ethan and Alex start to play the part, Ethan starts to realize that this is what he’s been missing all along, and what started as a problematic diversion, now is the real deal for him.
Misha Oshorvich plays Ethan, and they were the one to get this film an Indie Spirit nomination in Breakthrough Actor. While Ethan’s performance is solid, I was actually drawn to Nico Carney as Alex. It’s probably not the takeaway, but part of what makes this film work is Alex’s weird banter and when it comes time, Alex really has to work to make up for what was just a mistake for him, but a reality for Ethan. People in Alex’s life feel betrayed, but they also feel betrayed by Ethan, and it is how hard Alex works to let his friend know he still considers them best friends, and that means showing up. He runs around apologizing to everyone, trying to make people understand that their anger should be directed at him, not his friend, as this experience actually opened them up to who they really are. There’s something about setting up Alex as the ultimate bro, even if Nico is an LGBTQ comedian, and bringing home the idea of going as far as you need to in order to make things right, and to let your best friend know that nothing has changed. For me, Nico made the film, which might be an entirely different take.
It’s such an odd premise, that I’m both baffled by it and appreciative of it. In the wrong hands, it becomes something we’ve seen before. it becomes another Bosom Buddies, White Chicks, or that awful aBC sitcom Man Up from a few years back. It always amuses me to see how middle America reacts to the concept of transgender, yet they’d have no problem watching a classic film like Some Like It Hot, or Tootsie, or Mrs Doubtfire, or Big Momma’s House, or Tyler Perry Presents I Need Money. Somehow, if the LGBTQ community isn’t involved, and we don’t directly claim it as drag, or a glance at the transgender experience, men dressing up as women is box office gold. Yet, She’s The He, with authentic representation, and just as bawdy of a premise, will likely appeal to a smaller demographic.
Whatever, it just means that smaller demo gets to watch better films anyway. She’s THe He may sound silly, but it reflects what so often happens in our youth, the idea of exploration, and how often we don’t know what we want if we’ve never tried it or if we haven’t come in contact with it. If your option isn’t on the menu, how do you know you can ask for it? Ethan’s transition represents some repression, sure, but mostly it reveals a broader possibility of what could be, if those around were accepting enough of the journey to begin with. How do you know you’ll like dancing, if you’ve never tried?
She’s The He is goofy, but relevant, opting to push traditional teen comedy tropes into an ultimately LGBTQ positive film. it embraces the not knowing until you’ve walked a mile in someone’s shoes, and sometimes those shoes have heels.
Fresh: 7.6/10
