A Girl Named Lily (2022)

Poor, at best

TL;DR - If you're looking for fluff and healthy relationships, avoid this one. Likewise if you're easily upset or triggered by depictions of mental health issues and self-injury.

I really, really wanted to rate this higher. I really wanted this to be better than it was. As a wlw myself, God knows we need more representation in the media, and I'll take any crumbs I can get. But after sitting through the whole thing, all I can really say to sing its praises is, well, the girls were cute and the cinematography was beautiful. Bonus points for the ending not being tragic, I guess?

The acting is very awkward, but not unbearably so. Costuming was questionable (heavily creased dresses, long sleeves suddenly being non-existent, etc.). Storywise, this movie seemed promising, but it just didn't deliver. The plot is so paper-thin it's almost translucent, and it jumps around so often it's jarring. The pacing is painfully slow for the first half and confusingly rushed at the end. There is an abundance of unnecessary drawn-out solo shower scenes and sparsely-dialogued hanging out with the gang like all teens do scenes that lead to nothing plot-relevant, while conflicts that almost break down a relationship are solved so quickly that if you blink, you might miss it. The soundtrack, mainly made up of little piano tunes, was unremarkable. And the relationship between the two leads? Well, it's not the healthiest, for reasons I'll get into below.

The biggest issue I find with the mains' relationship is the use of self-harm as a romantic gesture. Self-harm is a big theme in this movie, though we're never given a proper explanation as to what drives the characters to do it. The scars disappearing and reappearing at random is off-putting, to say the least, given that such a discrepancy could've easily been avoided by having the actress wear long sleeves for once (which, IIRC, she never does). Anyhow, once one female lead finds out about the other self-harming, she counts up the cuts on each arm and determines that "if you cut three more times on this arm, you'll have an equal number on both arms, so stop after three". She then watches her cut more than three times and says "if you do it, I'll do it too" before proceeding to slice open her own stomach with a pair of scissors. Cue ill-placed intimate scene with cut-licking. Yikes. Smells like guilt-tripping to me. Not to mention the same female lead forcing the other to face a phobia when she's not ready to "help her get over it". Double yikes.

All in all, while I can recognise that there are some redeeming moments in this film, they are so far and few between that it was extremely difficult to enjoy. I suppose that if you go into this with no expectations, at least you won't be let down.

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