Good Kisser

Taylor Habraken, 20166197

Professor Habibe Burcu Baba

GNDS 125

13 February 2020

For this critical film review project, I saw, “Good Kisser” written and directed by Wendy Jo Carlton. In this 80-minute film, Jenna, who is an innocent and shy lesbian, agrees but is skeptical to share her girlfriend, Kate, a mischievous and malevolent person, with another woman, Mia for a weekend trip to spice their love life up. Throughout the film, Jenna is constantly having second thoughts, while Kate is unwittingly becoming jealous of every ounce of attention her girlfriend gives Mia, even though it was her idea to share each other. Once the couple arrives at their new friend’s house, all suspension is broke loose, and the audience immediately feels anticipation. As the night progresses, the heat and tension start to kick up and the secrets and thoughts of the experimental love triangle start to be uncovered.

In a turn of events, the writer decides to throw in a bit of “queerbaiting” with Jenna and Mia. Jo Carlton made us believe that Jenna and Mia would hit it off and become romantically invested in each other, however, that did not happen. The definition that Bea Mitchell from Pink News uses to describe “queerbaiting” is writers who “set up the gay romance, hint at it constantly, make it believable and deep and perfect, and then force it out of the story” (Mitchell, 2018). Throughout the film, Jo Carlton constantly hints at the fact that Jenna and Mia will become closer. For example, Jo Carlton has Jenna show her true colors by engaging in sexual flirtations with Mia, making the audience anticipated and eager, however, never following through with them, which is an example of queerbaiting.

Furthermore, the intersectionality that was within this film consisted of, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and much more. Concerning the plot of the film, the major overlapping of intersectionality was sexual orientation and sex. This film was based on a lesbian couple who wanted to include another woman into their sex life. With that being said, the intersectionality is their sex being female and their sexual orientation being lesbian. According to Peter Kaufman, writer of “Intersectionality for Beginners”, he says that “Intersectionality shines a light on this complexity and challenges us to look beyond stereotypes, prejudices, and taken for granted assumptions” (Kaufman, 2018). However, looking at Good Kisser from a negative critique, the film highlights the stereotypes of lesbians. For example, the film shows an exact stereotype that all lesbians want to have a threesome with their girlfriend and a friend, and that is exactly what Jo Carlton made the main plot of the film out to be. Jo Carlton went behind Kaufman’s idea of intersectionality and did precisely the opposite.

On the other hand, on the note of a positive critique, Jo Carlton challenges the stereotype that one of the partners in the relationship has to dress and act like the man to mirror a heterosexual relationship. To illustrate, both partners in the film dressed how females would normally dress, and neither one of them dressed nor acted like a man. To give an example, Jenna wore a skirt, and Mia wore a blouse, which are both examples of feminine apparel. To further benefit my explanation, all the characters in this film showed an example of femininity which “may include having long hair, wearing various forms of clothing that restrict movement such as tight skirts and dresses, long, figure covering garments, being submissive, nurturant, softly-spoken and docile” (OnQ, Module 4: Week 6: Gender Representations: Femininities). All in all, the film displayed a stereotype, but also opposed another stereotype.

In my opinion, this film took me out of my comfort zone and expanded my horizons on the LQBTQ community. A negative critique of this film that I may add was the graphical content that they showed. During one scene, I felt very uncomfortable and uneasy, due to how illustrated the scene was, I will not get into the details too much, but I even noticed that a man and a woman had to leave halfway through the scene. I felt surprised because I was not expecting them to show such a graphic scene. However, Jo Carlton added some nonchalant jokes throughout the film that made up for the striking scenes. To illustrate, one joke that made me laugh was when Jenna burnt her hand by lighting a candle and told her girlfriend that she was sorry because it was her “good hand”. Some innocent minds may not understand this joke, but certainly, most of the audience at the festival with me understood it. To make the joke even better, her girlfriend reassured her that it was okay because she is ambidextrous, which made the audience laugh even more. In my opinion, Jo Carlton could have not made the film so graphical so that the audience would not feel the same way I felt. However, on a positive note, Jo Carlton did a great job of keeping the audience on their toes and keeping them intrigued on what was going to happen next. Throughout the film, there was always something new and unexpected happening, the film was very unpredictable, which not a lot of films can say they have.

To summarize, Jo Carlton portrays various positive and negative critiques in her film. On the negative side, she exhibits stereotypes of lesbians and the relationship of a lesbian, and she shows graphical content that makes it difficult for some viewers to watch. On the positive side, she does a great job at incorporating intersectionality by basing the film off of a white lesbian couple, she also incorporates some terms that we have discussed throughout the semester, such as, queerbaiting, and femininity, which were both essential in the creation of the film. In addition, she was able to create an unpredictable film, which most writers and directors are not able to do, which makes her writing and directing technique stand out amongst others. To conclude, my review of this film is that it was an educational and interesting experience for me, it was certainly eye-opening to see a relationship from a different perspective that I am not usually accustomed to.

(1020 words)

References

Baba Burcu, Habibe. “Glossary Definitions.” OnQ, 2020

Kaufman, Peter. “Intersectionality for Beginners.” Everyday Sociology Blog, 2018

Mitchell, Bea. “Queerbaiting: What is it and why is it a problem?” Pink News, 2018