Something You Said Last Night

Look at him! He was neglected as a child, so now he is desperate for attention. He wants people to look at him weird, and wonder what's wrong with him, because negative attention is still better than none at all. He's trying to fill the empty void in his meaningless life, and his vapid personality just isn't cutting it. He surrounds himself with people who don't care enough to get him the help he so desperately needs, but instead will placate his delusions for fear of seeming mean or unhip. Now he will be hung out to dry when the next fad comes along, wondering exactly how and when he was derailed.

Four members of an Italian-Canadian family go on a one-week vacation at a resort. There is genial father Guido, overbearing organizer mother Mona, morose aspiring writer older daughter Ren, and accounting student younger daughter Sienna. Appearing by phone are son Anthony, and grandma Nonna. The sisters sometimes laugh and sometimes bicker. Sienna meets a staff person, and hangs around various party boys, which Ren is more circumspect, and usually goes off alone, once needing the help of a * sunbather to return. Ren seems a bit odd, and is the family member Mona mostly worries about. If I wasn't seeing this at the Inside Out 2SLGBT+ film festival, it could go over my head that she is transgender, since this is a subtle portrait of a post-op trans person, without all the drama of someone in a stage of transitioning. Still, it mostly seemed to be just another story of the dynamics of a family on vacation. In the Q+A, much was made of the film being made with the help of a fund that supports inclusion and mentorship of trans people, so a fair number of the crew was trans. The version I saw had open captioning, but where the characters spoke in Italian, that was put on screen verbatim, not translated. While sometimes I could get the gist of what was being said by the context, it was an irritant.

It's an ethnically Italian family drama set in the 2020s at an unidentified North American seaside vacation cottage for a summer week. It follows four family members at the seaside, one of whom is a trans woman. Guido (Joe Parro) and Mona (Ramona) have three young adult children. Anthony (Nate Colitto) has stayed home and is heard only on the phone. Renata "Ren" (Carmen Madonia) is a tall trans daughter; Sienna (Paige Evans) is a younger sister. Guido and Mona support both their daughters, but during the week, conflicts emerge, especially between Mona and Sienna and Ren and Sienna. For much of the week, Ren lives in isolation, partially self-imposed by her acute awareness of the reaction of others to her appearance. On the other hand, Ren is the glue that holds the family together. Guido and Mona are somewhat stereotyped, with Mona as an over-engaged, highly-verbal mom, while Guido is a mostly silent, distant, but supportive dad. Sienna and Ren both have secrets they are reluctant to share with their parents. "Something You Said Last Night" portrays family dynamics well, taking full account of the impact of a trans family member on internal family and external relationships. There is no high drama and no climactic resolution point in the film; it's one week in the life of a family. Luis De Filippis made the movie in 19 days in Orillia, Ontario. Its low-budget nature was challenging on this old man's ears as I could not understand all of the dialogue because of sometimes muffled audio. Some of the cinematography was also unnecessarily choppy. Nonetheless, it was an excellent film integrating a central trans character.