Movie review
Coley (Maya da Costa) is the new girl in a small Oregon town; she’s quiet and introverted, with a fellow teen observing that she has “sad eyes.” Those expressive eyes soon find their way to Sonya (Myra Molloy), a popular girl with an on-and-off boyfriend (Levon Hawke), a fondness for drinking and a way of looking at Coley that seems to make time fall away. It’s summer 2006 — you can feel, and almost see, the soft heat in the air — and soon the two girls are inseparable, perpetually exchanging AIM messages and painting each other’s nails. Coley is, quickly and swimmingly, in love; Sonya is … well, Coley isn’t sure, like so many things that teenagers aren’t yet sure of.
The gentle, assured teen drama “Girls Like Girls,” directed and co-written by Hayley Kiyoko in her feature film debut, has had a long journey to the screen, beginning as a song, a 2015 viral music video and a 2023 bestselling novel. (There’s one significant change between the video and the movie: Sonya’s boyfriend, in the latter, figures far less in the plot.) Like nearly all teen love stories, it’s a rather bumpy road for Coley and Sonya: Sonya is all in until their first kiss, which is a long time coming — and which leaves Sonya panicked about what it means for her identify, and a vulnerable Coley heartbroken at the rejection. Coley, we learn, is already haunted by something else entirely: Her mother is gone, and she lives with her father (Zach Braff) who calls her Nicole and seems a polite stranger.
That’s a lot for a teen — and a performer — to carry, particularly when the character is so reserved, but da Costa manages to convey a world of emotion in Coley’s quiet gaze. Molloy is often mesmerizing as Sonya, whose preening confidence occasionally evaporates like breath on a mirror, and Braff is quite touching as a man who knows he hasn’t been the father he should be, but is trying, before it’s too late, to do better. “There’s so much to love about yourself,” he gently tells Coley, in a line that encapsulates the film’s journey.
“Girls Like Girls” has a few slow moments, but Kiyoko beautifully captures the looseness of teens hanging out, the vague endlessness of summer when you’re young and the shimmery, shivery feeling of first love.
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