Boy Meets Girl (2014)
★ ★ ★ – Very GoodBondo's turn in the Top 100 Club has always been good to me, with Discoveries like Water Lillies, Cashback and Ruby Sparks. (I'll also throw in
Leave it On the Floor, the big bang of successful Bondo recommendations.) This time around I get Boy Meets Girl, a film which takes my old-fashioned thinking of placing genders into one of two boxes and smashes it with Michelle Hendley's portrayal of Ricky.
As with most Bondo Discoveries, the acting is a little shaky, mostly with the smaller roles. However, it's a very likable film with people who can make up for their limitations with charm. (Bondo can forgive to a point how a LGBT film speaks if the message is so needed.) Also, because it's a a different kind of romance, the script can surprise us with characters who treat each other with humanity and acceptance and not just throw a bunch of questions like they're conducting a transgender science experiment.
Now for some
SPOILER talk.
As a writer, I really admired the way they handled Francesca's army boyfriend, David. With everyone else being nice, his cruel slurs stood out for the hate speech they were, yet there's an honesty to someone thinking that way. I didn't want to hear Ricky talked about in this way, but it felt right. Then there's the garden party, and you think they're going to take his hatred too far, but Francesca's father makes a decisive move that instantly defuses the situation in equally strong terms. When David shows up at Ricky's house later, I was expecting some typical bad guy behavior, but the film surprised me once again (though they don't explain exactly what happened all those years ago, which brings up questions. Is David closet gay? Exactly what did happen between them? Am I still trying to apply labels to an intimate encounter that defies them?)