‘Transitions Shorts’ Reviews: Reel Affirmations 2023

metroweekly.com:

Overall Rating for this Program: ★★★★☆, CRITIC’S PICKThis year’s “Transitions” program kicks off with a sweet, honest portrayal of young love in Daisy Friedman’s As You Are (★★★☆☆).Millie and Piper, an inter-abled lesbian couple played by Bri Scalesse and Estefanía Giraldo, navigate their expectations around spending the night together for the first time and must reckon with their own sexuality and vulnerability as so many couples do.Although the two have an early moment of tension around Millie’s use of a wheelchair, that tension reveals itself to be about a deeper insecurity on Piper’s part.

In this way, Friedman takes a refreshing approach to depicting disability on film, making sure it is present and acknowledged, but taking care to tell a three-dimensional love story around it, too.Honey & Milk (★★★☆☆) drops us into the end of a mature relationship, following the story of a couple who has decided to end their partnership and must dismantle their lives.We are dropped into the final weekend of the relationship between Grayson, who has begun to transition, and Alice, who loves and supports her partner but struggles to grieve the impending loss.While there is little in the way of narrative payoff and the short seems uncertain of exactly what it wants to build towards, the chemistry between the two is believable, it nevertheless stands as a beautifully shot portrait of a love that outlasts a relationship that must end so one half can be free to thrive.The program takes a heartrending turn with Our Males & Females (★★★★☆), a brief, deeply affecting short from Jordan.