Giant Little Ones (2018)

Director: Keith Behrman

Stars: Josh Wiggins, Darren Mann, Taylor Hickson...

Genre: Drama

Country: Canada

Summary: Two popular teen boys, best friends since childhood, discover their lives, families, and girlfriends dramatically upended after an unexpected incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party.

Two best friends get drunk on a party and spend a night together in bed. We don't really see what's happening as it's all under the blankets, but something definitely happened as one of them runs out of the room angrily and the other one tries to stop him. From that moment on, I believe I'm not the only one who thought Franky was the gay one because he was the one who tried to calm down the situation as if he did something wrong. But, there's a plot twist in the film and I'm not going to spoil it for those of you who might be interesting in watching this.

After the thing between them happened, they start getting more and more distant, their families also start growing distant and then bullying kicks in. There's a violent bashing scene where Franky is the victim so that was pretty difficult to watch as well as the previous bullying, cold-shoulders and distancing from a person that was his best friend until then. That's one of the reasons it was so difficult. It wasn't anybody who was behind those things, it was his until-then best friend. It's sad to see how much people can change as a result of their (auto)homophobia.

I liked the character of Mouse. I think she (or he? I've read that people characterize her as a transgender character. She's not very feminine nor she tries to be, but I still considered her to be a female) was the only fun character.
Even though she's not as fun, I also liked the character of Natasha because she showed a generous amount of empathy towards other people despite having to go through horrible things herself.

Another interesting aspect of the movie is that Franky's father is also gay and divorced. The mother and father are still sorting things out and the mother is still coping with it as we can see in the movie. Franky and his father don't have much of a relationship, but later on in the movie that changes. We can see his father being there for him and that was a nice moment in the movie.

After all of this, I still can't say I liked the movie. It was too bleak for me. All of the characters (except for Mouse) were sad and struggling in their own way. It wasn't too enjoyable to watch, especially the bashing scene which was sort of a culmination of events.

Genèse (2018)

English title: Genesis

Director: Philippe Lesage

Stars: Noée Abita, Paul Ahmarani, Marc Beaupré...

Genre: Drama


Country: Canada


Summary: Three teenagers are shaken up by their first loves in the turmoil of their youth. At a time when others are conforming, they stand their ground and assert their right to love and be free.

When I started watching this movie, I didn't expect three different stories that aren't connected to each other. Maybe they are connected by a theme or an idea that they're sharing, but it's actually three short movies in one, not a one whole movie for those of you still wondering.

So, what is this about? As the summary says, it's about three young people (one of them literally a child) searching for love and acceptance. Each of them is going through different things. First story is of a guy coming to terms with his sexuality. The second story is about a girl that, after her boyfriend said he wanted more free space to maybe experiment with other people, felt hurt by that and wanted to distance herself from him as she didn't feel the same amount of security in their relationship anymore. At least that's how I interpreted it. She dumps the boyfriend and goes out into the world trying to find what she needs, only to return to him after getting hurt even worse and disappointed at how it went for her with other people. The third story I didn't even try to follow as it was completely not interesting to me. As for what I've seen, it's about a young boy falling in love with a girl for the first time in a summer camp.

So, there's that. The first story was the most interesting to me by its theme since it corresponds to this blog. But it's nothing special. There's no romance, nothing happens. The main character is very brave so he confessed to his crush in front of the whole class (though I wonder if that was necessary) and it went well. No bullying, bashing or other horrible things so that was definitely positive. But we can slowly see how the people are starting to distance themselves from him because of his confession. And then the movie ends. Just like that. They all do. We have no idea what happens to the characters after what they go through, there's no sense of closure. It may annoy some viewers, but it's certainly not the first movie to do this and some of you may be even used to that kind of endings by now.

The second story was okay even though there's no gay theme present. I already said everything you need to know about it. What I need to add is that this second movie has a rape scene in it. It's of course unpleasant and certainly didn't make me like the movie more.

Other than all of this, I think the soundtrack was interesting and I recognized a song I like in there.

So, there you go. If I knew all of this before, I probably wouldn't watch the movie as it's not what I'm looking for currently. I like my movies to be more concentrated on romance. Based on the pictures, it looked like this movie had the potential for that, but it was a different concept than what I had in mind.