‘Summer Solstice’ Review – This Hell of a Debut Feature Will Change You

The big picture

• Summer Solstice
  explores changing friendship dynamics from a transmasculine perspective.
• The thoughtful direction of Noah Schamus gives the film authenticity and specificity.
• Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Marianne Rendón do an excellent job playing multi-dimensional characters that are flawed yet easy to root for.

Maintaining friendships as an adult can be difficult. Without the benefit of seeing your friends every day in the hallway at high school or sharing a dorm with them in college, it takes more effort to stay in touch. This can be further compounded by factors such as living a great distance from each other, working in multiple fields, or even developing different priorities and interests. As you grow, you may naturally grow apart.

And yet, there is something special and irreplaceable about your friends from those periods of your life. It's a magical thing, being able to reminisce with someoneessentially time travel when you talk about your fourth period English teacher or the time you both got drunk at a Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Summer Solstice captures both the challenges and the beauty of this dynamic through a trans lens.

What is the “summer solstice”?

Summer Solstice centers around a shy and strange trans man named Leo (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), who spends her days going to acting classes, auditioning, and trying to find love, often in the wrong places, like with her classmate and friends with benefits, Alice (Monica Sanborn). Her life is interrupted by her best friend Eleanor (Marianne Rendón) arriving in town and dragging him on a road trip to upstate New York, the first time they've actually spent time together since Leo began transitioning. Eleanor is Leo's opposite in almost every way: straight, cisgender, and unafraid to speak her mind, even when maybe she shouldn't. Their weekend getaway stirs up old feelings and new resentments alike and has the potential to do just that either strengthen your friendship, getting it to a more honest and open place, or end it forever.

The 'summer solstice' overflows with authenticity and specificity

To be completely transparent, I am a cisgender lesbian with several close transmasculine friends, which gave me a particularly interesting perspective and made this film very personal. Queer people often have a specific language and way of interacting with each other — a unique bond and sense of community that emerges when they come together. Summer Solstice features a scene that captures this with gorgeous authenticity when Leo hangs out with his friends Oliver (Mila Myles) and Joe (Yaron Lotan), bonding over their shared love of film Cruise ship. Queer people have been so underrepresented in the media that we often cling to things we know are deeply problematic because, despite their flaws, they can make us feel seen, understood, and even empowered. (This is, in fact, a central theme of Sav Rodgers'documentary Chasing Chasing Amy.) It's affirming to have these spaces and conversations with other queer people, others who immediately “get it” and can understand first hand.

However, it can be difficult to integrate someone who is not part of the community into the group, which we see through Eleanor, who feels isolated and abandoned. To compensate, she says some pretty sloppy, cringe-worthy things after a few glasses of wine. “You think I'm queer heterosexuality, maybe?” she asks at one point. “I just want to be in the club,” muses another, wishing to be queer and effectively ignoring the history of oppression and struggle that comes with the identity.

Eleanor acts inappropriately and self-centered, especially when it comes to Leo's transition, but the film makes it clear that she's behaving this way because she's struggling with her own insecurities and identity. Writer-Director Noah Schamus handles his character impressively throughout, holding Eleanor accountable for the harm she inflicts while having compassion for her own struggles. In lesser hands, Eleanor could veer into pure villain territory or be seen as a joke and not taken seriously, but Schamus' direction combined with Rendón's vulnerable, layered performance makes her feel like a real person.

There are simply things that Eleanor, like me, will never be able to relate to: the particular brand of body dysmorphia that trans people can struggle with, as well as the rewarding kinship they can tap into because of their shared experiences , for example. Summer Solstice it allows Eleanor to go on a parallel journey to Leo's, where she has to wrestle with the fact that there are things about Leo that she won't understand, and things that Leo might not want to share with her because of it. Throughout the film, she must learn to de-center herself and her own feelings about Leo's transitionsetting aside her selfish desires to support him and his boundaries.

Schamus is taking a lot of risks with this project, and this is one of the biggest. Leaning into this arch shows them trust the audience to see Eleanor as complex and flawed, but ultimately redeemable, but also shows that they aren't afraid to call out cisgender people who are transitioning as someone else about themselves. Schamus doesn't shy away from showing the negative effects that words and actions—even, on the surface, “well-intentioned” ones—can have on full display.

'Summer Solstice' allows its characters to be flawed and joyful

It is important to note, however, that Summer Solstice it is never exclusive or alienating. It feels like a love letter to the transmac community, but people who aren't trans or queer at all will still be able to connect and enjoy it. It's not a lecture, but a specific take on a universal story of love and friendship – themes that everyone can relate to. It deals with difficult subjects, of course, but he does it with great joywhich is especially refreshing for a story that focuses on trans characters.

Summer Solstice is accessible to all kinds of people, and that's because of the strong script, thoughtful direction and Menuez's subtle and charming performance. Menuez makes Leo easy to root for from the get-go, brimming with patience, passion and a disarmingly awkward charisma. He's very nice, but he's also not an imperfect, untouchable pillar of morality. Schamus allows him to have fouls, letting himself walk at times and falling short with Eleanor at others. He, too, feels like a complete and fully dimensional person, never claiming to speak for or trying to represent all trans people. It helps that she's far from the only trans person in the film, so they're not presented as a monolith.

Summer Solstice also offers a strong, somewhat metacommentary on the state of trans representation in entertainment making Leo an actor. The film opens with a dramatic, heavy, clichéd monologue about top surgery that (thankfully) is revealed to be for a project Leo is auditioning for, showing us the kind of roles he's often offered. Casting directors then crudely ask if he is transmasculine or transfeminine, portraying the kind of intrusive and exhausting questions that trans people can be bombarded with every day, even in professional settings. It's exciting to see Leo prepare for a project that goes beyond that and discovers how to express his emotions by connecting with the material. It shows how impactful and therapeutic art can be.

The film is so strong when it focuses on the themes of friendship and identity that the the romantic plots can feel a little weaker. Leo's relationship with Alice gets little screen time, and his other romantic subplots, while intriguing and sweet, are a little sloppy and rushed as a result. Eleanor's relationship with her boyfriend Will happens entirely off-screen, which is fine, but we don't know as much about their dynamic as we need to for certain revelations and story beats to hit as hard as they probably should. .

However, Summer Solstice is one hell of a feature debut, proving that Schamus has a strong, important voice and a very bright future as a writer and director. Programmers, note that this would do a fantastic double duty Will and Harper, which is also about a road trip of cisgender and trans friends and is one of my favorite documentaries of the year. Not to sound corny, though this is the kind of movie that has the power to change minds, hearts, and lives.

Summer Solstice opens in US theaters starting June 14. Click below to see times near you.

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