52 Tuesdays
Director: Sophie Hyde
Writer: Matthew Cormack
Cast: Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Del Herbert-Jane, Mario Späte, Beau Travis Williams, Imogen Archer, Sam Althuizen, Danica Moors
Part of: Viennale

Plot:
Billie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) has been living with her mother (Del Herbert-Jane) – but now her mother decided to officially become James. During his transition, he asks Billie to move in with her father Tom (Beau Travis Williams), but promises that they will see each other every Tuesday. In a year full of changes, over the course of the next 52 Tuesdays, Billie and James have to work out a lot of things together and separately.

52 Tuesdays was a beautiful film. Touching, sensitive and thoughtful, it approaches its topics with a lot of care and understanding and keeps you engaged throughout.

52 Tuesdays is a film committed to diversity. Not only when it comes to gender – with James’ transition (and how wonderful that we get to see a F-to-M transition for once – usually it’s only M-to-F) -, but also to families – we pretty much get to see every variation – and love in general. Billie finds herself in various kinds of family relationship and falls in love with an almost-couple (Imogen Archer and Sam Althuizen) with whom she later has a polyarmorous relationship (and how wonderful that we get to see a polyarmorous relationship at all and then even one that has its issues, but there’s no struggle because of the fact that it’s three people and not just two).

But despite showing the many different forms life can take, Matthew Cormack’s script craftily uses parallels to explore Billie’s and James’ development. From the video diary that James keeps to track his progress to the video project Billie uses to make sense of her world to their hesitation to talk about new relationships after their initial closeness was disrupted, it is clear that both Billie and James go through a re-ordering of their lives at the same time, separately and together. A kind of puberty, if you will – Billie for the first time, James for the second.

The film uses its unusual structure very effectively and Sophie Hyde always has an eye on the pacing – if all Tuesdays had an equal share of time, it probably would have started to drag, but Hyde knows when she should speed things up and when she should take more time.

The only thing that didn’t work for me was the way Billie’s video projected (was) ended. I felt that it was a little sanctimonious and not handled with the same sensitivity as the rest of the film. But in a film that does everything else very right, it mattered little.

Summarizing: More films like this, please.