The Feels
Director: Jenée LaMarque
Writer: Jenée LaMarque, Lauren Parks
Cast: Constance Wu, Angela Trimbur, Josh Fadem, Jenée LaMarque, Ever Mainard, Lauren Parks, Kárin Tatoyan
Seen on: 14.6.2019

Plot:
Andi (Constance Wu) and Lu (Angela Trimbur) are about to get married. But first – a bachelorette weekend that they decided to do together with their friends Josh (Josh Fadem), Regular Helen (Ever Mainard), Vivien (Lauren Parks) and Lu’s sister Nikki (Jenée LaMarque). As they settle in to party, things get a little alcoholic and talk turns to sex, as they usually do on such occasions. Almost unwittingly and to Andi’s utter shock, Lu admits that she has never had an orgasm. That admission throws a serious wrench into their weekend.

The Feels might be improvised a little too much, but other than that I found it absolutely wonderful and lovely and entertaining.

The Feels choosing (female) orgasms as its topics and that in a queer context is a double-challenge. I thought that they handled that challenge admirably. They gave room to many different perspectives and experiences. Plus, they always stayed true to their characters emotions. That makes it both insightful and touching and gave us a couple to root for.

The cast was really great and carried the emotional weight of the film easily. I have to admit, though, that I was particularly impressed with Ever Mainard and her Regular Helen who stole every moment she got a chance to steal with her sense of humor.

The one drawback of the film was that the dialogues didn’t really gel. Either the film really was too improvised, or the script just wasn’t that round and would have needed another round of editing. But since the emotional side of it still worked very well, this was an easily forgivable flaw.

As a final bonus, there is a performance by Kárin Tatoyan (who goes by KÁRYYN in her musical life) and her music is really very cool and engaging, giving me another enticement for a film that is overall a really good watch that has some interesting and probably true things to say.

Summarizing: Very much recommended.