Stress Positions

Neon has been on fire this year, they have cranked out so many films this year and they are all worth the watch. Among them is the film Stress Positions. This is one of their smaller films this year, I am not sure how widely it was marketed. I know that I didn’t see that much about it, but that can be a sign of a brilliant film, so let’s see if this one will be worth some awards conversations.

So we have talked about how one of the most misused writing techniques in screenwriting is narration. Narration is overused, it's often cheesy and it often isn’t actually necessary.

Stress Positions opens with lots of narration. It takes place during the pandemic so we are contained to the characters' apartments. We knew that was going to happen sooner or later, it has already started seeping into television shows. Culturally it takes place among the gays. Our narrator is a transgender woman who is living with her lesbian girlfriend, their best friend is gay. This is important for a lot of reasons; 1) it's not an aspect of America that we get to see a lot 2) when we do it's often 1 character, and not a representation of the whole community.

This is what I call an everyday film. It is literally depicting the day to day activities of the characters. Nothing major happens, there are no exciting action scenes or major drama. It is just interpersonal relationships and everyday activities. Especially since this takes place during covid really nothing major happens. So if you need something with a clear plt where stuff happens this is most definitely not the movie for you.

It can be considered slow but sometimes those movies are necessary. If you want a film where you can slow yourself down then this is it. It doesn’t explore anything major theme wise either. It's not saying anything profound or commenting on anything. What it does do is a pretty decent character study. It explores the LGBTQ community in a way that really hasn’t been done on film before. If you are young and struggling with your sexuality and what that means for your place in the world then this is a really perfect film for you.

The casting is really well done. This is exactly the kind of movie where you don’t want super big named actors. Having up and coming people representing communities that they are pretty closely tied to. Theda Hammel starred in, helped write and directed the film which is definitely why the story and the characters are so cohesive. I would argue character studies are the only time where having one leading voice on the creative team is nice. Semi-autobiographical stories are allowed to be less collaborative. The film debuted at Sundance and you can tell. This definitely feels like a Sundance film.

The characters themselves are definitely the most interesting part of the film. Like I said there is hardly a plot, thus there isn't a clear story being told but the characters being used to tell it are incredibly interesting on their own.

Stress Positions is a great character study, perhaps the best character study film we’ve gotten in a while. That said it wasn’t really my genre. I very much like a plot and character development which is not what this film was for. I understand its purpose, it's just not my thing. So my objective ranking of the movie as a film is 8/10, my personal preference rating for anyone that cares is a 6/10. In neither viewpoint is the movie bad, and it definitely worth the watch.