“Girls Like Girls” has been a very long time within the making.
Initially launched as a music video in 2015 by musician Hayley Kiyoko, the tune with the lyrics “Girls like girls, just like boys do” shortly grew to become a sapphic anthem, amassing 163 million views on YouTube thus far.
“After we released the music video, I saw thousands of comments from fans saying, ‘I wish I could go see a film like this. I thought to myself: I’ve never been able to see a movie like this before,” Kiyoko tells Selection. “It planted this seed, and it’s been an extreme challenge of 10 years convincing the industry and the world that our voice matters; that being a queer woman of color is not niche, it is mainstream. There are millions of us, and we deserve to have stories that we can count beyond just our two hands.”
Kiyoko’s function movie, which opens in theaters nationwide on June 19, is an growth of the music video of the identical identify. “Girls Like Girls” follows Coley (Maya Da Costa), a young person who finds herself falling for her greatest good friend, Sonya (Myra Molloy). After assembly by an opportunity encounter, the 2 develop nearer, exchanging IM’s and hanging out in each spare second, finally sharing a kiss after Coley opens up about her lifeless mom. Unable to take care of her rising emotions for Coley, Sonya (who additionally has a boyfriend) begins pushing Coley away, leaving the latter to navigate her rising pains alone.
Courtesy of Focus Options
Coley regains her footing with the assistance of her father (Zach Braff) and begins working at a restaurant, the place she runs into Sonya after months of silence. The 2 lastly deal with the elephant within the room, with Sonya admitting she desires to be with Coley however nonetheless views it as “wrong,” a lot to Coley’s misery. The tense, tear-filled scene can also be the primary one Da Costa and Molloy carried out collectively after Kiyoko introduced the pair again for a chemistry learn.
“There was this moment where I forgot that I was in the room and I thought I was watching the movie,” Kiyoko remembers, including that she felt supported by her studio to forged two actors of Asian descent. “I remember thinking: They’re the ones. This is the movie I’m going to be watching.”
For Kiyoko, who’s Japanese American, seeing herself represented onscreen was non-negotiable. The story of “Girls Like Girls” relies on Kiyoko’s personal experiences, all the way down to being set within the yr 2006. “You can’t control losing a location, having to pivot or cut a day of shooting. What you can control is making sure that it feels real and authentic,” she says. “If I didn’t connect to it, then we had to adjust or shift to make sure that I saw myself in this story, and I had to trust that my experience would be able to resonate with other people.”
Kiyoko initially started fleshing out the ladies from the music video for her 2023 novel (additionally titled “Girls Like Girls”), on which the movie is loosely primarily based. When it was time to determine Coley as a personality, Kiyoko as soon as once more turned to a supply near her: Her mom. One in every of movie’s saddest strains comes throughout Coley’s interval of solitude, the place she tells Braff’s character that her mom died with out ever actually understanding her.
“My mom lost her mom when she was really young, and I always empathize with the fact that had she been queer, what that would have been like to never really know her full self,” explains Kiyoko. “Being queer is not our entire personality, but it’s a huge part of who we are. There are so many of us who aren’t accepted by family and are searching for their chosen family; it’s really hard to process the fact that so many people are conditioned to have their love be conditional, and to not want to know all of us.”
Courtesy of Focus Options
Coley is a straightforward character to sympathize with. Younger, new to city, and inching out of the closet slowly isn’t a straightforward feat for anybody, particularly if stated transfer is as a result of latest dying of a guardian. Whereas it makes Sonya’s hot-and-cold conduct exhausting to look at, there’s one thing to be stated about her making an attempt desperately to determine who she is as nicely.
“To be honest, it’s taken me a long time to navigate Sonya’s character and find that line of empathy, and also the messiness,” says Kiyoko. “When you’re a kid, you’re navigating things for the first time, so you’re not necessarily going to say the best things or handle it the right way. It was important for me to highlight that doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, but there was a line of having accountability within your actions.”
A lot has modified for Kiyoko within the decade for the reason that characters of Sonya and Coley have been created. When the music video first aired, Kiyoko, then 24, was fearful of popping out in such a public method, which wasn’t helped by the truth that the one outlet that premiered the video was AOL.com. Over ten years later and now engaged, she’s turn into considerably of a queer icon and has been dubbed “Lesbian Jesus” by followers.
Mentioned followers have grown up alongside her, too. A number of folks have informed Kiyoko that the “Girls Like Girls” universe helped them work out their sexuality as younger teenagers and pre-teens, and they’re now in a position to purchase tickets to the movie with their pals and neighborhood.
There’s a sure stress on the film to ship in each phrases of content material and field workplace numbers as nicely, one which Kiyoko feels immensely.
“Sapphic love stories aren’t told all the time. And if they are, it’s once every decade, or we don’t have a theatrical release, or we have a TV show that gets canceled after one season,” says Kiyoko. “Just as women in general, it’s harder to be able to get into those rooms. 5% of women of color directors represent the entire industry, so you’re starting a journey where there’s already a massive hill to climb, beyond what the story is going to be.”
“I feel like sapphic-led films are so behind gay male culture, and every person in the alphabet deserves to have their stories told and amplified,” provides Kiyoko when requested in regards to the success of homosexual male media, which she feels will get the greenlight extra steadily. With “Girls Like Girls,” the hope is it’s going to sign to studios that there’s a demand for illustration, particularly if achieved precisely.
When queer ladies are depicted on-screen, there’s usually the issue of them being objectified or fetishized, handled as a punchline or one thing sensual for a person to be happy by. “Throughout my career, people have mentioned to me how non-sexualized my stories are; how grounded and real they feel, and they always ask me why,” says Kiyoko. “It’s because I’m a woman, and I have experienced this kind of love. A lot of our representation wasn’t necessarily told through an authentic lens for so long, so that stereotype and that narrative was created from someone who had never experienced what we’ve experienced.”
Maya da Costa, left, and Myra Molloy with director Hayley Kiyoko.
Dan Energy
It’s clear that Kiyoko is answerable for her personal story – and that’s why she modified the ending.
The film ends with a shot of the ladies sitting by the pool, with Sonya’s head resting on Coley’s shoulder. When the credit start taking part in, viewers who’ve seen the music video might expertise some déjà vu.
Within the 2015 observe, Sonya’s boyfriend finds them by the pool and begins cussing them out, pushing Coley to the bottom, who, in flip, punches him. It’s by far essentially the most dramatic scene of the video, leaving a bruised and bloody however smiling Coley to bike dwelling after sharing a kiss with Sonya.
“I tried it a couple of different ways,” Kiyoko says about determining her movie’s conclusion. “I ended up realizing that if I did the original ending, it would have made it all about him. I didn’t want the last beat to be about him, because this story is about the girls.”
“Coley and Sonya have been on a very beautiful, long journey of continually peeling this onion down to the most authentic version of the story, which is this film,” says Kiyoko, who hopes that her subsequent directing alternative gained’t take one other decade. She goals to proceed to get sapphic tales “told and seen.”
As for what occurs to the ladies subsequent? It’s as much as the viewer the place they go from right here.
