Film reviews: Girls Like Girls | The Last First: Winter K2
Hayley Kiyoko’s debut feature is tender and well-acted, if a little dramatically inert in places, writes Alistair Harkness
Expanded from a song into a YA novel and now a movie, pop star-turned-novelist-turned filmmaker Hayley Kiyoko’s directorial debut Girls Like Girls puts a committed queer spin on a pretty standard coming-of-age narrative and comes up with something tender and well-acted, if a little dramatically inert in places.
Maya Da Costa takes the lead as Colley, a sullen, flannel-wearing teen newly arrived in a small Oregon town to live with her estranged father (Zach Braff) following the death of her mother. Almost immediately she meets and bonds with Sonya (Myra Molloy), the cool, pretty, popular girl in town whose on/off relationship with her jerk-of-a-boyfriend Trenton (Levon Hawke) hints at a dissatisfaction with the heteronormative life she’s expected to live, and from which her new flirty friendship with Colley might offer some escape.
Smartly setting the film in 2006, when coming out was less commonly accepted than it is today, Kiyoko uses vague societal disapproval as the main hurdles in Colley and Sonya’s evolving relationship, with the latter repeatedly pulling away every time things threaten to get real, and Colley understandably hacked off when others describe her feelings and desires as “wrong”. Shot with a hazy, Instagram-style glow, its arty sensibility is sometimes at odds with its more conventional storytelling, but Da Costa and Molloy have a believable chemistry and Braff has some good scenes as Colley’s making-up-for-lost-time dad.
The title of The Last First: Winter K2 refers to fact that the second highest mountain in the world had, at the time this film covers, never been scaled in winter. That made it the ultimate goal for mountaineers who wanted to be written into the history books in an era in which there are no more major peaks left to climb. It also created a lot of competition, which is where this doc differs from most mountaineering films.
Director Amir Bar-Lev shows how his initial subjects, Icelandic climber John Snorri and Pakistani father-son team Ali and Sajid Sadpara, soon found themselves facing off against a team of Nepali Sherpas (lead by the late superstar climber Nirmal “Nims” Purja) and an expedition of under-prepared amateurs (organised by adventure company Seven Summits), all of whom arrived at K2 in a post-Covid rush to get to the top when Pakistan re-opened its borders.
What happened next is best discovered for yourself. Suffice to say the film becomes a disaster movie, but one that not only raises intriguing points about the way western climbers’ stories are prioritised over those of the local sherpas who frequently get them to the top, but also subtly examines the role social media now plays in driving people to ignore risks and push themselves beyond what they’re really capable of in pursuit of their own 15 minutes.
Girls Like Girls is in cinemas from 2 October; The Last First: Winter K2 is streaming on AppleTV+ from 2 October
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.