REVIEW: Hayley Kiyoko Executes A Confident Directorial Debut With ‘Girls Like Girls’

You don’t have to have grown up queer in the mid-2000s to connect with Hayley Kiyoko’s coming-of-age drama. Co-written by Stefanie Scott and based on a 2015 song and music video of the same name by Kiyoko, Girls Like Girls captures the exact tension of feeling alone and hurt at a vulnerable young age. With wise camera placements, plenty of Y2K aesthetic, and excellent performances, Girls Like Girls is as solid a directorial debut as it is a summertime queer romantic drama.

Coley (Maya da Costa) recently moved in with her estranged father (Zach Braff) after her mom passed away. He lives in a small town where everyone knows everyone, and has absolutely no idea how to connect with his mourning daughter, whom he basically doesn’t even know. You can tell from her small number of friends on AIM that Coley probably wasn’t very popular before she moved here, but by the time she arrives at the beginning of the summer, making new friends towards the end of high school seems increasingly difficult.

One afternoon, while sitting by herself at the local diner, cool girl Sonya (Myra Molloy) pays Coley some attention, and as the days go on, they grow close. Coley finally starts to open up and reveals her true personality, as well as the truth about her mother—something she hasn’t talked about with anybody in the months since her death.

Maya da Costa delivers a subtle knockout performance. 

Maya da Costa is phenomenal. The breadth of emotions she captures in her performance is wide, and she conveys most of it through intricate, subtle facial movements. She’s a spectacular crier, with every ounce of sadness coming through. She also combines awkwardness and mirth so well that, while the age of the characters in Girls Like Girls is vague, the performance puts you right in the tribulations of teenagehood without question.

Coley also grows substantially over the course of the movie, with multiple phases of self-confidence and well-being. Da Costa portrays that ark with clear distinction. The camera, too, calms down as she does. Earlier on, the cuts are frantic and frequent, coming from all kinds of angles (especially ones that offer a specifically lesbian gaze). But things get quieter on this front as the movie moves along and Coley settles into herself.

Because the story of Girls Like Girls is fairly rote, it’s the performances that really make it stand out. It’s about a first crush, trying to understand what those feelings actually mean, and how to reconcile two people’s similar but different experiences with it. All while dealing with loss, regular social pressures, and the added pressure of queerness in the 2000s.

Girls Like Girls lets Sonya be more than a simple foil for Coley. 

Where Coley is just thrilled to be experiencing something so natural and joyful with Sonya, Sonya is hiding all kinds of feelings from Coley. Her own insecurities manifest by pushing Coley away, being mean to her, and pretending like there’s nothing sexual or romantic growing between them at all.

But while Coley is the main character in Girls Like Girls, and the audience spends an actually too-short 90 minutes rooting for her happiness, Sonya isn’t treated like an outright villain for how she treats Coley. She is, after all, just a kid too, dealing with the same hardships as anybody that age.

Wisely, Girls Like Girls occasionally makes Sonya the point-of-view character, too. Never for too long, but enough times that you can put yourself in her shoes and feel empathy for why she treats Coley how she does. It’s not about justification; empathy goes a long way toward preventing Sonya from becoming an annoying presence in the movie.

The film finds emotional catharsis through the father and daughter dynamic.

The lighting in Girls Like Girls is another standout. Even in the rare nighttime or twilight scene, everything is bright enough to see, and usually filled with lush color composition. This is not a given in certain, like-minded indie films, which often under saturate themselves in the pursuit of some kind of visual melancholy. It is odd, sometimes, that even some scenes that feel like they are taking place at night, or later in the day, have a bright sky above them, but that is preferable to scenes with too little light every single time.

When Coley and Sonya aren’t exploring their relationship or how their other friends play into the mix, Coley is also navigating her relationship with her father, Curtis. Or, really, he’s trying to navigate his relationship with her. Coley’s father left when she was young, and it’s unclear whether they’ve been in much contact, if at all, since then. But from square one, Girls Like Girls paints Curtis with the softest brush.

Shy and awkward himself, Curtis is incredibly patient with Coley, encouraging her even as he urges her to connect with him, but never pushing her too far on it. He deserves a dad-of-the-year award. Braff plays him with just enough softness, but never too much timidity. You feel bad for him, too. As a result, the film delivers ample catharsis when he and Coley do connect.

With Girls Like Girls Hayley Kiyoko delivers a confident directorial debut. 

Girls Like Girls doesn’t overdo it with its Y2K references. A lot of the movie revolves around using AIM to communicate, and the outfits are on-point, but you’re not hammered over the head with topical references. You’re also not inundated with the toxic culture of the time, either. There’s just enough reference to homophobia and disordered eating, for example, to place you squarely in what it felt like to live in that era, but not too much that it overtakes the movie.

Just because life might have been even harder for these characters in the real 2006 doesn’t mean that a movie has to portray it to that extent. The cast is diverse, the friends try their best, and their language isn’t unnecessarily cruel. It’s a gift to the viewer to have as much of 2006 as is necessary to place yourself in the headspace without being retraumatizing.

Girls Like Girls is a simple queer coming-of-age story. Yet its performances elevate it while its insistence on empathizing with nearly all of its characters, as well as its audience, elevates the material. It’s short and sweet, attentive to the audience’s needs, and altogether a solid directorial debut for Hayley Kiyoko.

Girls Like Girls is in theaters June 19th.