this movie makes me so unbelievably happy!!!!!!!!!!!!! was listening to dan romer’s flawless (and unforgivably snubbed) score while writing this afternoon and got so swept up in it that i was like hm lemme actually just go watch this thing and then found myself falling in love with it all over again <3

what i’m writing at the moment has to do queer kids, so even if that wasn’t how i already interpreted luca and alberto’s relationship, i would’ve seen those shades to the story anyway, but i truly love the lack of explicit clarification here so much. it feels so true to life to me; i think it’s hard to explain the exact nature of your feelings for a Close Friend Who’s Maybe More when you don’t even know who or what you are yet, and i love that the movie doesn’t rush either boy - or their relationship - to a finite resolution. i think it fills the film with far more depth (allowing others to come to different conclusions i would’ve never seen myself) and makes it a more enduring work, one that will generate discussion for years to come.

i also just think there’s something so beautiful about letting the love luca and alberto so clearly feel for one another remain in that chaste space where we live most of our childhood. the right is so quick to associate queerness with sex and deviancy - commonly using this as a reason for why we must “protect” children from it - and yet here, in my opinion, you see that the first and purest form of true queer love is anything but grotesque or immoral. it’s rooted in genuine companionship, comfortability, and the discovery of a sanctuary in time spent with another person who sees and walks through the world the way you do, when you previously thought finding such a person was impossible.

hirokazu kore-eda’s monster is another movie that recently explored this uniquely queer experience with the delicacy and sensitivity it deserves (and it affected me quite similarly, if not even moreso), and i hope against hope that art like this continues to be put out into the world (i’m trying!!!), because it so beautifully depicts queerness as i see it, and as i wish the entire world will someday soon once we’ve dispelled the monstrous myths that have stuck to us - an existence characterized by the fullest freedom of both body and soul, and one that brings you into a community created with the warmest care, comion, and camaraderie i’ve ever known.