Queer Teen Sex Comedy Bottoms is fucking absurd

It’s a tale as old as time – two losers want to get laid before they graduate high school. But in Emma Seligman’s second feature film bottoms, their aspirations sink into bloody absurdity.

Two “untalented gay guys,” PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), start a fight club to “empower girls” amid an epidemic of violence against women. But really, the duo just wants to make out with the aloof cheerleaders they have massive crushes on.

bottoms

Release date:
open
Director:
Emma Seligmann
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Shiva Baby director Emma Seligman’s second feature film revels in slapstick melodramas.

Josie lusts after a Himbo jock’s girlfriend, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), while PJ becomes obsessed with the popular Brittany’s (Kaia Gerber) bowel movements. As they throw themselves into a string of lies that pins the duo as bloodthirsty Juvie alumni, the plan begins to work in their favor and form a self-defense club to serve as an outlet for their own horniness. But Josie and PJ’s fibs soon catch up with them when footballer Tim (Miles Fowler, in a standout performance) grows suspicious of their club, forging a rift between them and the community they inadvertently created.

Co-writers Seligman and Sennott have worked on the script since the previous SXSW premiere was created Shiva baby (the short) and before the creation of Shiva baby (The characteristic). Away from the fearful drama of the director’s first feature film, bottoms becomes full-on sex comedy and satirizes the genre at an insane joke-per-minute ratio.

And with Edebiri, the breakout star on Hulu The bear and new addition to NBCs Abbott Elementary Schoolin the mix, the film features a sacred trifecta of collaborators.

Having written the character of Josie with Edebiri in mind, her often shaky, understated performance melds seamlessly with Sennott’s bolder and bolder PJ. Although a familiar duo of hesitant everyman and obnoxious leader (see: Very bad‘s Evan and Seth), these two blur the lines of the common trope. The pair’s reunion following their masterful Comedy Central web series on navigating the modern dating scene, ‘Ayo and Rachel Are Single’ bottoms delivers a full-length celebration of the couple’s natural chemistry.

As a result, the film commits a bit, almost a mistake. Pure theatricality weighs slightly on its few attempts at emotional beats, leaving little room to breathe between cackles. Still, Sennott and Edebiri’s talent shines through, where PJ and Josie momentarily feel real and their friendship is truly jeopardized. But after the seriously untrustworthy tune of the entire project, that beat is soon cut with Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” and a cliche montage that satirizes the teen comedy genre itself.

However, Seligman and Sennott didn’t want to make a teen film that explored the heartbreaking nature of girlhood. Rather, they deliver a queer film that doesn’t deal with the coming out or the trauma of homophobia, but instead laughs in the face of reality. They present understandable female failures who find real strength in their situation – even if their means of power is a belligerent murder frenzy.

As such, bottoms The third act culminates in a bloody clash on the football field, scored and set in slow motion by Charli XCX. Like the great ones that came before (um, heather), a gory melodrama is the ideal way to portray the high school experience. At 17 it all feels like life or death anyway.

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