Big Small Shifts

While Giant Little Ones (Keith Behrman, 2018) could easily be placed in the context of contemporary LGBT teen cinema, it is worth analysing precisely due to the ways it defies such classification. More than a film about teenage homosexuality, it turns out to be a film about teenage self-discovery, fuelled by the discovery of one’s sexual orientation and sexual identity. The film thus avoids the classic representations of the distance between the queer person and their conservative environment, finding the main conflict in the intimate dilemmas of the main character. The emphasis on the personal allows the film to remain refreshingly loose and ambiguous in its narrative, thus offering some insight into the underlying principles of teen films and teenage life itself.

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