Ryan McNeil
Note: TIFF 2018 marks the first time I’m taking in selections from the TIFF Short Cuts Programme. In lieu of a full reaction piece that I usually post for a festival selection, I plan to underline what the film is about, and offer a brief thought or two on where the experience of watching the film took me. Enjoy! – RM
What are you gonna do with that?
FUCK YOU is the story of a Swedish teenager named Gina who shoplifts a strap-on and sees what wearing it brings out in her male friends.
The boys of FUCK YOU are brash, macho, peacocking sorts of lads. They show their bravado by how much pain they can take, how high they can jump, and other such silly displays of masculinity. Their faces when confronted with another symbol of masculinity on one of their female friends are priceless.
Director Anette Sidor rightly assumes that boys would look at a girl like Gina, and be threatened by her newfound appendage. They presume she doesn’t know what to do with it (news flash: it ain’t complicated, boys), and that she is something…other.
A girl like Gina is not just another pretty lass impressed by machismo. While she might have found her way into this moment on youthful impulsiveness, she quickly finds her eyes opened with maturity about what a simple challenge to masculinity brings about in the boys around her. The question this movie poses is less what she will “do with that” than what the boys around her will do.
The question gorgeously goes beyond sex and kink – it’s a direct challenge to young patriarchy, and an affecting one at that.
The boys of the world need to catch up quick: The patriarchy is at long last being looked in the eye and confronted. How men respond to that confrontation will speak volumes about their place in the new world order.
FUCK YOU plays TIFF 2018 as part of Short Cuts Programme 5