New lesbian fight club comedy Bottoms will be your latest obsession: ‘They’re losers and they’re gay!’
Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms. (Orion Pictures)
If you’re after a dose of absurd lesbian comedy, then look no further than Bottoms, a queer coming-of-age film with a sexy twist.
Director Emma Seligman’s second feature film starring Bodies Bodies Bodies‘ Rachel Sennott and The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri premiered at SXSW festival to rave reviews.
The film follows teens PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edebiri), best friends at the bottom of the high school food chain.
Both lesbians, they are targeted by the straightest guy in school, the star football player, after being accused of flirting with his cheerleader girlfriend Isabel (Havana Rose Liu).
After some clever rumour-spinning, they manage to set up a school-approved fight club under the guise of teaching girls self-defence but that really only has one true purpose: to hook up with hot cheerleaders.
As summed up by Seligman: “They’re losers and they’re gay!”
Packed with candid conversations around sex, awkward humour and bloody brawls, there is something for everyone in this offbeat queer teen comedy, which takes inspiration from cult classics such as But I’m A Cheerleader and D.E.B.S.
Co-written by Sennott and Seligman, who also worked together on 2020 queer Jewish drama Shiva Baby, Seligman spoke about the inspiration behind the film.
“I wanted to create a teen female queer story where the characters were not undergoing trauma but also weren’t these perfect, sweet, innocent beings.
“We wanted to create messy, complicated, selfish, corny teen female characters that we could relate to,” Seligman said.
And Sennott added that the honesty around how much teens actually know and talk about sex was a crucial aspect of the scripting.
“Sometimes it’s like the girls discover a vibrator in the couch and they’re like, ‘Oh my god! What is it?! We’re scared!'” she said, as reported in Variety.
“It’s not that scary. It’s blue. We all have, like, six in the drawer. We just wanted to go there and be real with that.”
Reflecting on the casual exploration of sexuality not defined by coming out trauma, Edebiri added: “If I had seen this when I was 16, this probably would have made my life slightly easier, and then maybe slightly harder as well.”
Initial reviews have started rolling in, with IndieWire writing that Bottoms can be both a “hilariously surreal teen sex comedy and marry it with one hell of an eye for action sequences”.
And touching on the bold nature of its raunchy and bordering offensive dialogue, Variety added that it is “unlike any high-school comedy you’ve ever seen. It’s a satire of victimisation, a satire of violence, and a satire of itself. It walks a tightrope between sensitivity and insanity.”
Rolling Stone have hailed Bottoms as the “Heathers for this generation” adding “it hits you, and it feels like a kiss”.
There is no official UK release date yet.
