Bottoms Up

Bottoms Up

By: Jude Sampson (They/ He)

I’m of the firm belief that movie watching is a divine, communal experience and that the theater is a house of worship. The artificially dyed slushee is my holy water, the popcorn is my body of Christ, and Emma Seligman’s new bloody lesbian sex comedy Bottoms is my bible.

It’s a movie that pays homage to the highschool rom-coms we all grew up watching at sleepovers while simultaneously turning the genre on its head and allowing its characters to be deeply flawed, horny, and violent – all in the name of lesbianism. Director and co-writer Emma Seligman in an interview for Cultured Magazine touched on wanting to put queer people into a universe that reflected the films she watched growing up. “I wanted to take on the genres that I wish I could have seen myself in as a kid—these movies where boys fight to get the girl,” she said.

Seligman delivers in her efforts to spin the boy-girl love story for a new, much gayer generation, because in Bottoms, girls fight the girl… to get the same girl.

The film follows two best friends, Josie and PJ, who have been dubbed the “ugly, untalented gays” of their student body. Played by Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, the pair find themselves at a social and romantic standstill as they start another school year as sad, lesbian virgins.

They both harbor longtime crushes on the cheerleaders Isabel and Brittany, played by Havana Rose Liu and Kaia Gerber. PJ pines for Brittany openly, while Josie quietly (and pitifully) attempts to make her feelings for Isabel known. Before an embarrassing encounter with them at a school carnival, the two shoot down their classmate Hazel’s (Ruby Cruz) questions about their summer, allowing her to believe that they spent their break in juvie. Hazel spreads this rumor and therefore the idea that Josie and PJ are badass criminals, which is only believed more after it’s revealed they hit the school’s star quarterback with a car the night of the carnival. Isabel and Brittany take note of them for a fleeting second, so the obvious next step is for the two to start an all-female fight club to get closer to and eventually hook up with their crushes.

This small taste of the film’s plot is like something I could have only ever envisioned in my dreams. As a lesbian screenwriting major, I have watched oodles of “lesbian movies” – many simply for the sake that they have a lesbian character or romance at its center. Many of my favorites are very dramatic and emotional, which I adore. I’m definitely guilty of crying to many a sad lesbian film.

Still, can’t we have a little fun sometimes?

I grew up closeted, being forced to watch the very heterosexual high school movies of our youth surrounded by squealing girls at sleepovers. It’s not that I never enjoyed watching these! It’s very easy to endure straight couples in media when you simply pretend the man is a butch lesbian (10 Things I Hate About You). With Bottoms though, I no longer have to pretend.

Josie and PJ are such good representation that millions of years from now when our cities are entrenched in dust, archaeologists will find evidence showing how beloved they are in the sphere of lesbian media. Emma Seligman is a queer woman who understood herself, and subsequently her audience, while co-writing this film with Rachel Sennott.

Josie and PJ have zero game. They are beloved by no one. They lie. They fight each other to impress girls. It’s a version of the lesbian experience so niche to being gay in high school that sitting in the theater for my first viewing felt like looking in a mirror.

However, I cannot in good conscience say that I relate to every aspect of this movie. Was I a gay loser in high school? Of course. Did I ever kiss a girl? Or do anything romantic with a girl? Absolutely not. You know who kissed girls in high school? Josie. Josie is a quiet but kind loser who starts the film with little to no backbone. She says goofy things in front of the girl she is madly in love with and by virtue of being goofy… they end up together. Experiencing a “she fell first, but she fell harder” trope on the big screen forced my viewing party to call me an ambulance to escort me out.

I’d also be a fool to not mention the cultural impact the film has had since the moment it got greenlit. Last year, I remember reading the Deadline article that described the plot and confirmed Edebiri and Sennott were playing our titular heroes. LGBTQ+ people from every corner of the internet came together to collectively approve of the film and create countdowns to when they’d finally be able to watch it.

Ever since it received a wide release (meaning it went from playing in 10 theaters nationwide to 700), my entire social media sphere has been nothing but edits using pirated footage from inside movie theaters. My TikTok feed is just edits of Havana Rose Liu as Isabel, but the footage was taken by someone sitting in the front row at their showing so she looks 80 feet tall. The footage is blurry and the theater audio is trash, but the comment sections are always a symphony of people going “I need her” and “she’s so pookie”.

Do not be fooled by my tone. I am also an active participant in this lesbian chorus.

The Bottoms social media account is also extremely active on every platform, reposting videos that fans of the movie have been making and replying to Ruby Cruz thirst tweets with kind words of agreement. I hope the intern running that account is making good money.

Because the actors could not promote the movie due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike (union strong), the account simply reposts videos and pictures of things like Rachel Sennott at New York Fashion Week and Ayo Edebiri throwing out the first pitch at a Red Sox game (absolute dream job). I pray that the cast and everyone involved in the making of the movie are feeling the love, because I felt it the moment I stepped foot into my first viewing. It was just gay people giddy with excitement, taking pictures with the film’s poster and armed with 7-Eleven snacks at an overpriced movie house. Characters said things like: “No, if we keep it up we can put our fingers inside of each other,” and the raucous laughter that followed was confirmation that Seligman and Sennott are never allowed to put their pens down. When Josie and Isabel kissed for the first time, people clapped and cheered, and I was given a second to look around and think.

Lesbian fist fighting, an Avril Lavigne needle drop, bloody cheerleader uniforms, small-scale terrorism, Ayo Edebiri kissing women, and a sidelining of male characters led me to my conclusion.

This was our Super Bowl. Our bloody, horny, lesbian Super Bowl; and Emma Seligman led lesbians everywhere down the road to victory.