Relish

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Available Summary:

"Touted as a modern day Breakfast Club with an edge, five teenage outcasts, led by a rebellious transgender male, escape a private treatment facility. The group embarks on a wild, life-changing road trip – ultimately discovering they have a lot more in common than they ever imagined." -YouTube.

Jack's Summary:

I personally wouldn't recommend watching this movie, but it is available on YouTube for free, so you can make up your own mind. Every character is a stereotype, which is supposed to serve a purpose when those stereotypes are later subverted... unfortunately, though, no character development successfully transforms this ragtag crew into anything but a collection of one-dimensional personalities, no matter the effort which the actors brought to their roles.

We have an Asian woman with blue streaks dyed in her hair, who has contamination OCD which conveniently disappears whenever the writers can't be bothered with it anymore (boy, do I wish it went away that easily). We have a violent jock who compensates for his own weaknesses with aggression. We have a superficial, popular blonde woman who is actually incredibly insecure and deeply distressed. We have a young man whose psychiatric disorder manifests in muttering and outbursts when convenient for the plot, and he is easily calmed despite being completely–and abruptly–cut off from treatment. And then, of course, we have a suffering trans man, who is misgendered within the first six minutes of the movie.

Kai is later shown wearing bandages to bind his chest, which made me furious. Any goodwill that this film earned for casting a trans man (Tyler DiChiara) in a trans male role utterly disappeared with the portrayal of such a dangerous act. Filmmakers easily could've shown him wearing a chest binder. Kai is supposed to be pre-everything, which (I imagine) is the justification for having him use bandages, but that doesn't make sense when the actor playing him is very clearly on testosterone.

Kai is cornered by two cis men later in the film, who are intent on raping him after clocking him as trans. The sexual harassment and assaulting of trans men is an under-discussed issue in modern trans advocacy, so I'd have been happy if this film tackled it... But it didn't really tackle it, not in a meaningful way, and seemed to be more focused on demonising two random rural blokes as nasty redneck stereotypes. Later, when another character discusses being raped, her trauma is glossed over in a similar way.

In terms of general warnings, the film includes drug and alcohol use, suicidal ideation, self harm scars, sexual harassment, slut shaming, implied/discussed rape, transphobic beliefs, and drug withdrawal.

The one thing I did love about this film is the normalisation of Kai's pre-op body around his friends, after he seemingly stops binding with bandages. That aspect of the film gets a 10/10, regardless of everything else.

If you want to see DiChiara in a better, more watchable context, I recommend the superhero series Gotham Knights. It's cheesy as fuck, but quite fun, and DiChiara plays a trans male sidekick.