Every once in a while, a coming-of-age film comes along that depicts a talented white woman with great hair going through the same niche problems as us — and it is terrifying. This could be the movie that holds a mirror up to your life, or it could be tone-deaf and leave you to solve problems like a normal person who doesn’t look to the cinema for their next personality change.
All this to say, Am I OK? is neither groundbreaking nor violently offputting. It just exists, and sometimes that’s enough to be enjoyable.
Sometimes, it is enough for this premise to strike a nerve.
Lucy’s story is important because it demonstrates a situation rarely discussed when introducing LGBTQ+ characters in media.
Sexuality is a spectrum, and that means experiences can be as fluid and frustrating to label. Lucy isn’t the first woman so afraid to emotionally open up that she grows terrified to leave the closet or even question if the room she’s been in all her life might be a closet. Her late bloom into dating women may seem new to an industry that only sees black-and-white spectrums of diversity. However, it is an inner monologue so many women have with themselves.
Here lies the value of this movie — to make women who are scared to explore their feelings for other women feel safe and seen.
And Dakota Johnson does a fabulous job of being the leading lady vessel for those experiences.
It is enough to make some of us who are struggling through the many shades of adulthood, including our sexuality, cry. And I did cry several times throughout this film. Not because the dialogue is super profound or because Lucy’s story is particularly tragic. But at points, her mundane experience reflects the frustrations of this situation with such accuracy and honesty that it strikes a chord.
It’s the lack of instant solutions that will really knock you to your knees emotionally.
After Lucy acknowledges her feelings for women are legit, she spends a good chunk of this film crawling out of her skin. She describes feeling “weird” over and over, her frustration with being vulnerable with other women cracking in her voice at times. Seeing her become even more lost as she finds answers is uncomfortably relatable.
Her feelings during this period of the film feel emotionally draining, but in a wholesome way that suggests this film does its job where it counts.
If you, like me, see a startling amount of yourself in her journey, you will appreciate what Am I OK? can do for those who need to be comforted by their own deeply personal, rarely-spoken-out-loud torments.
Because it is far better to struggle together than alone — a central theme of this movie.
Am I OK? succeeds as a lived-in LA indie because it explores sexuality and the growing pains of adult friendships with relaxed humility.
Sadly, like most contemporary indies, it loses itself in the character nuances too much, diverging from the better parts of the plot to give a blanket scope of the girlhood experience rather than honing in on the magic of Lucy’s individual journey.
There is a version of this movie in which Lucy and Jane’s separate growing pains seamlessly intersect, making their adorable ending all the more rewarding. The reality is as much as Jane and Lucy’s rich, complex journeys through adulthood deserve to be explored side by side, they end up derailing each other’s momentum.
There is a lack of focus on how the threads of their losses and triumphs will weave back together. As a result, the two best friends spend vast chunks of this film apart, and we spend even longer periods of time with characters who are not Lucy.
Am I OK? has two winning tales of womanhood and needs to choose one to champion as the starring act. That indecisiveness makes for a convictionless, mundane experience at times that feels aimless in a way that is entirely counterproductive to the indecisiveness of Lucy’s dating life.
Alas, just like the women at the center of this tale, this story doesn’t have all the answers. But it does have a hammock sanctuary run by Tig Notaro.
That’s a good enough reason as any to see what this hidden gem has to offer.
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Am I OK? is now streaming on Max.
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