In a remote home-room class, a shy and emotionally reserved classmate decides to come out as a lesbian. Longing for love and support, she is left to face a disappointed friend and a homophobic bully in Kabir McNeely’s Blue Girl.
As the pandemic finally comes to an end and life begins to return to some form of normality, Zoom, and Teams meetings are a strong overlying theme of the last few years. The majority of us have used either one or both of the apps at some point while the many internet gifs, memes, and viral videos that have been created of images, webcam malfunctions, and meetings thanks to modern technology remain clearly stuck in our memories. Thanks for using your authority Jackie Weaver.
Filmmakers have had to get creative during the Covid period and this has helped separate the best from the rest, leading to some truly inspirational pieces of work. Now writer and director Kabir McNeely, has given us Blue Girl – another entry into this new genre which I’ve decided to call low-budget lockdown.
The title Blue Girl is a nice little nod to the breakout French hit Blue is The Warmest Colour from 2013 which also centered on a young girl’s struggle with her sexuality. Opening with some generic guitar soft rock, we see fingers tapping keyboards, the clicking of a mouse, and we are entered into a zoom meeting of classmates.
First online are Katie (played by the innocently naïve Bella Murphy) and Connor (our director McNeely). Katie wants to come out to her friends as lesbian and after a brief few words to each other, they are joined, one-by-one by their colleagues. Using jump cuts, McNeely provides each girl with their moment to say hi, which garners the biggest laugh as they all say it after each other while poor Katie is desperately trying to find the right words.
One of Katie’s classmates is the hideous Mara, a homophobic bully played by the brilliantly vicious Adele Rudnick. To look at Rudnick she reminds you of the sweet Harry Potter and Beauty And The Beast actor Emma Watson, but as the 4-minute short progresses, she becomes more hateful and turns into the Wicked Witch Of The West. Rudnick has the showiest role of the group and she grabs it with both hands giving us a truly despicable villain we simply want to boo. Her performance is helped by the position of McNeely’s camera as it shoots Rudnick from below and we can see each nostril flare as she gets more horrible. This camera position helps to emphasise the snobbishness of Mara as it feels like she is looking down on everyone on the call, even the viewer.
Due to McNeely’s age and inexperience, there are a few technical issues that lower the quality of the film somewhat. The sound mix is a little off, which gives some characters more volume than others, meaning we have to listen closely to some dialogue and then are blasted by a louder voice seconds later. The lighting is mainly natural light coming from the actor’s rooms, but because this isn’t professionally measured, each scene seems noticeably darker or lighter than its predecessor. Finally, the editing needs to be a little cleaner and snappier when switching to the different character’s reactions and replies, as this would help with the pace of the film.
However, when 90% of LGBTQ+ students report that they get bullied every year, McNeeley deserves credit for highlighting an important issue and providing us with a memorable villain who no one in their right mind would ever want to hold the same views as. Blue Girl is an important film that is worth catching if you can.
Thank you for the review! I’ll certainly keep this feedback in mind for future projects.