When I walked out of the Bottoms screening at a local LBGT+ film festival, I left with my heart overflowing with a sense of pride I thought I’d never experience. The first queer film I ever saw in theaters was Love, Simon. I was 14 years old and only came out as queer a few months before the film’s release. When I walked out of the theater after the movie, I felt surprisingly empty — not because the film wasn’t heartwarming but rather because I didn’t feel as represented or understood as I thought I would. While queer characters of color briefly appeared, the film, at its core, was a coming-of-age story of a gay and cisgender white boy, which has been the “conventional” story that the majority of queer films and TV shows tell. Though Bottoms positions itself within the teenage sex comedy film genre, it doesn’t shy away from exploring the coming-of-age story of queer characters of color.
Of course, many films in Hollywood, especially in the last decade, have centered on queer and trans people of color (QTPOC). This range includes notable films like Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All At Once, which have received accolades like Oscars, and smaller indie films such as The Watermelon Woman that have become queer classics. However, the film industry still lacks a wide variety of stories exploring the intersectionality of racial identity with sexuality and gender. Most films about QTPOC focus on the trauma that many young QTPOC deal with: growing up in a society, or even their specific racial or queer community, that often rejects their intersectional identity.
In some of these films, the main character finds acceptance and love in their community, while in others, they suffer from their inability to reconcile all aspects of their identity in a way deemed acceptable by the cisheteronormative society. While the tragedy featured in these films is essential for illustrating the challenging parts of embracing this particular marginalized identity and helping QTPOC process our experiences, these films can be hard to watch because we are already familiar with this pain and have lived through the struggles portrayed on screen. Conversely, watching films featuring our joy and victories while respecting our identities is essential for our community to thrive and equally crucial for fostering our connection to our experiences and identity.
Bottoms features the coming-of-age dramatic aspect that many QTPOC films include. In contrast to the common tragic narrative of drama QTPOC films, Bottoms doesn’t shy away from exploring the empowerment and joy of sapphics of color. Although the film doesn’t explicitly address how racial identity intersects with queerness, this connection is explored implicitly throughout the story. Josie (Ayo Edebiri) pines after Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), a queer Asian American girl who is dating a white footballer named Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine). At the beginning of the film, Josie expresses her frustration with Isabel’s choice to date a dumb white guy instead of her. Isabel’s infatuation with her boyfriend fades throughout the film as she realizes her feelings for Josie.
Jeff only really plays a role in setting the “self-defense” club for girls, run by Josie and PJ (Rachel Sennott), into motion. He doesn’t serve as a central character in the story but rather as comic relief. In films about sapphics, men often have a pivotal role in the relationship. For example, The Half of It is a story about a Chinese American sapphic, Ellie, who develops a bond with her crush, Aster, by writing love letters to Aster on behalf of a white guy who is also in love with her. This male-centric approach can feel alienating specifically for lesbians of color, as men often don’t play a focal point in our romantic relationships.
Bottoms’ focus on Josie and Isabel’s relationship, separate from Jeff’s involvement, feels like a fresh breath of air for many lesbians of color. The film even goes so far as to turn the act of Isabel breaking up with Jeff and, with the help of the self-defense club, doing property damage to get revenge on him into a pivotal moment that makes Isabel realize that she doesn’t need a man, especially a white footballer who cheats with older women, to be worthy of respect. Additionally, for many films with a sapphic of color as the main character, their love interest is often a white woman. But in Bottoms, the main sapphic couple is an interracial couple with two sapphics of color. This is more representative of how sapphics of color often seek out relationships with other sapphics of color because we have similar experiences and, therefore, feel more understood.
The film balances moments of empowerment with ones of weakness to let the audience empathize with the main characters as we watch them learn from their mistakes. There’s a particularly touching moment in the third act. When Josie’s friendship with PJ and relationship with Isabel are tested, Josie seeks out the mentorship of an elder Black lesbian, played by Punkie Johnson. By allowing Josie to seek guidance from a fellow lesbian of color with whom she has an intergenerational mentorship bond, Bottoms illustrates the challenges lesbians of color frequently face during the coming-of-age experience while maintaining its comedic tone.
While Bottoms does an excellent job of showcasing queer joy for sapphics of color, it’s important to note that white women, Emma Seligman and Sennott, wrote the film. In supporting QTPOC representation in films, we must consider how well we are represented both on screen and behind the camera. And, of course, as in any case with films featuring QTPOC, Bottoms should not carry the burden of achieving perfect representation but rather add to the gradually expanding category of films that showcase QTPOC joy.
There’s no doubt that Bottoms will become a cult classic for young queer people of color. Though the film made me laugh out loud several times, I was tearing up just as often, grateful to see such an empowering story about sapphics of color in high school finding support in a community of mostly queer women and getting a happy ending. Watching Bottoms made me feel like I was 14 years old again, discovering queer films for the first time, except this time, I walked out feeling completely understood and hopeful that this film will inspire and comfort future generations of sapphics of color as it has for me.
