Yes!!! A mixed-race asexual protagonist!!! 🤩 But also... wow. I’m feeling so many conflicting emotions right now, we’re gonna have to bullet-point this. 

The 4-star-or-higher stuff:
– VISUAL STYLE = Oh my gosh, this movie was beautiful. Even though it had a low-budget feel, the lighting / set decoration / colors were gorgeous. And the cinematography stood out in several places – every shot was visually interesting, and there were a couple of really cool moments, like when a single shot suddenly split down the middle and followed one character into another room while remaining on the other character on the other half of the screen, until they reunited again. Super cool. 
– DIALOGUE = I really enjoyed the writing for both of the main characters. Their conversations were very fast-paced and fun to follow; they felt very clever but also real, very evenly matched. It really sold me on them as real people, and also on their connection. It was really a treat to watch. 
– MAIN CHARACTERS = I’m gonna talk about Todd a lot, but I also really loved Rory!! She was so much fun to watch, the actress did a great job, she was very relatable and actually reminded me of one of my friends. 😊
– REPRESENTATION = Once again: a mixed-race asexual protagonist!! But then... well, let’s get into the other half of the movie.

The things that felt weird (to me):
– SIDE CHARACTERS = (Just quickly, before we dive into the real meat of the review) – All of the side characters felt a little cringey. They tended to say or do things that were pretty extreme, and were at times pretty uncomfortable to watch. One character was just straight-up racist, and the reaction of everyone else was basically “haha, whatever.” I understand that this was probably an intentional choice to make everyone but the main couple a little hard to relate to, or to explore caricatures of different viewpoints, but still. I just felt a little uncomfortable with them. 
– THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM = Okay. Here we go: It was very clear from the start that Todd was asexual. So many things resonated with me, from the “I don’t want to end up alone” motivation to pursue relationships, to the “you’re just too scared to admit you’re gay” argument from side characters that I’ve heard used against asexuals by allosexuals (straight, gay, bi, pan – people who experience sexual attraction) in real life, to the idea that back massages are a perfectly satisfactory replacement for sex in an intimate relationship. It was perfect. So close to perfect. So very nearly perfect representation... but his asexuality was never explicitly addressed. 

I don’t think I’ve said it before on this site, but there’s this pet peeve of mine when it comes to movies where the main character is so clearly set up as asexual, but they never actually discover that there’s a term for it or that it’s a valid sexual orientation. The story usually ends up with them entering into a new relationship and coming to the conclusion that it was just a problem with their self-confidence or something, but it’s totally cool now, because now they like sex and everything is fine. This happened in Alex Strangelove. It happened with Otis in season 1 of Sex Education (although I’m fine with what they did in season 2). 

Straight Up skirts the line of this trope, in a way that made me both appreciative and frustrated. 

On the one hand: at no point did the writer just decide to straight-up change Todd’s sexuality. He stayed consistently ace for the duration of the film, and he seemed pretty certain that this was what he was, and he was perfectly fine with it. He would only start agonizing over whether or not he was secretly gay, whenever the other characters would express their doubts – which they did, like, constantly. And that’s not unrealistic; I mean, I mentioned before that if allosexual people don’t know what asexuality is, it can be hard for them to understand it. But those “secretly gay” doubts remained the dominant explanation of Todd’s asexual behavior, all the way until the end. I feel like your average viewer would probably leave this movie either with the idea that 1) he’s gay and he only chose to be with the girl because he was uncomfortable with having gay sex, or 2) he’s asexual because his OCD makes him fundamentally incompatible with the messiness of sex (which is fine, but also not the reason for anyone’s sexual orientation, and also not “something to get over”).

What’s frustrating is that Todd actually mentions asexuality once (once!), as an offhanded comment in a list of possible orientations when he’s working himself into a stress-spiral at his therapist’s office. Which means that the writer knows what asexuality is!! Which means he should KNOW that Todd is asexual!!! (And which feels like something he already knew from the start, since he both wrote AND acted as a character who is so nuanced-ly asexual that it feels like only an asexual could have written this!!) It’s just... confusing. Why couldn’t he have discovered this label, and come to terms with himself, and had the exact same happy ending as they implied in the end? Why couldn’t literally anyone else have validated him – his therapist, for instance? (She’s just like “oh, you love this girl? Congrats, you must be straight now!”) 

...I’m gonna go try to find some interviews from this writer, because I need to know what he’s thinking. 

But yeah – go watch this movie, because it’s really pretty! And it’s a very good representation of what it feels like to be asexual! Or go check out AVEN (asexuality.org) to learn more. You can expect my frustrated-rebuttal short film to enter production sometime next year. 😘🌈