‘The Half of It’ Creates a Whole Picture of Regional Queerness
A queer movie review of Alice Wu’s new film
(Warning: This review contains minor spoilers of the film.)
For a movie whose Netflix premise vaguely reads like another take on Twelfth Night, Alice Wu’s second major film, The Half of It, steers clear of visual paraphrasing and instead takes a clear snapshot of what it looks like to grow up as a queer immigrant in small-town, regional America.
The film stars Leah Lewis as Ellie Chu, an intelligent-but-friendless high schooler, who is strapped for cash while supporting her grieving father, Edwin (Collin Chou), in their small town of Squahamish. The story follows Ellie through a circumstantial journey as she’s commissioned by classmate Paul (Daniel Diemer) to write romantic letters to a girl in their school, Aster (Alexxis Lemire), on his behalf. The only problem is, over the course of their false-pretence relationship, Ellie also falls for Aster.
Ellie, as our narrator, premises the film with the statement “…this is not a love story…”, and she’s right. The Half of It explores the theme of love, it continually, anxiously asks what love really is, but it is not a love story. This film is a story of intense loneliness. Ellie, the protagonist, feels intellectually separate from her peers, and…
