The lesbian character feels like a prop, a character meant to show up in flamboyant eye makeup, go through IVF, and then die.

It’s thrilling to watch an artist as accomplished as Arnold reach a sort of apex of her talents while still pushing for reinvention. The result is a film that is impossible to predict from narrative to form to emotional experience.

This is a very human film, but it’s also a very gay film with jokes that are sure to land even harder for queer audiences.

This isn’t just a film about queer characters with a queer form — it’s also a film with very specifically queer motivations and conflicts.

There are limits and boundaries that vanish outside the paradigm of heterosexual expectations.

The wrongness of the servant/matriarch relationship does not preclude these encounters from being very, very sexy.