When the rights of trans people are under attack, an oft-made argument is that cis women will be next. It’s a plea for a selfish form of allyship — if you don’t care about us, at least care about yourselves. This framing has always bothered me. I want cis people to care about trans people because we’re people. But also cis women — especially cis women with marginalization beyond gender — still experience plenty of oppression. It feels like a bastardization of the thing we need most: solidarity. Not solidarity inspired by self-preservation, but solidarity born from genuine care.
Lillah Hallah’s Power Alley begins with an act of teamwork. A trans girl takes off her wig and hands it to her masc friend with a shaved head. Then the trans girl and an obvious little dyke distract a pharmacist while the masc friend — looking like a proper, unassuming lady in the wig — shoplifts some essentials. Makeup. Hormones. A pregnancy test.
None of these three characters will be our protagonist, and yet beginning with this joyful — and practical! — example of rebellion clarifies the point of the film. It’s as much about these individuals as it is about Sofia (Ayomi Domenica), the girl who will eventually use the pregnancy test.
Sofia is the best player on her super queer and trans volleyball team and when that pregnancy test comes back positive, her dreams of accepting a scholarship to play in Chile begin to slip away. She confides in her best friend, the shoplifting dyke, and is adamant that she wants an abortion. Unfortunately, in Brazil, where these teens live, abortion is illegal.
There have been many, many excellent films following characters attempting to get abortions despite restrictive laws. From dramatic thrillers like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007) and Happening (2021) to comedies like Unpregnant (2020), from this year’s harrowing The Girl with a Needle to an essential subplot in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this all too common — past and present — experience has been captured well on-screen. Power Alley has the most in common with the very best of these films: Eliza Hittmann’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020). Despite their radically different tones, both films are just as interested in the bonds that help its pregnant character seek what she needs as they are a realistic portrait of the restrictions they face.
But while Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a work of contemporary neorealism, Power Alley is fun. Hallah balances the film’s tones with an expert touch as scenes of harrowing oppression alternate with scenes of raucous queer teen joy. And I don’t mean Queer Joy™ — I mean friends to lovers lesbian sex scenes and peeing off an overpass onto cars.
Unlike many films about abortion that isolate the protagonist — or give them one ally — this film dares to give Sofia a collective. She has her best friend and the rest of her volleyball team, and she also has her supportive coach Sol (Grace Passô) and even her imperfect dad. A weaker film would have relied on the teens’ lack of support for dramatic effect — Hallah understands that to fight the well-organized anti-abortion coalitions it requires coalitions of our own.
Throughout the film, easy narrative choices are resisted for the unexpected and more effective. That’s as true for the ways the film is ultimately an underdog sports movie as it is in the ways it exists within and beyond the subgenre of abortion films. The team decides that if they win the championship, they can give Sofia the prize money for her abortion. It’s a perfect narrative conceit that ends up shifting from movie fantasy to real life in ways that are sharp and powerful.
While the film’s plot is primarily focused on abortion access, the film is also an essential portrait of another overly politicized issue: trans teens in sports. During one scene, the shoplifting trans girl takes her estrogen shot, while a teammate rubs T gel on themself. It’s implied that their coach Sol had to fight hard to create this utopic vision of teen sports, and the results are obviously worth it. These kids have found community and are learning about how to work hard and help each other and win as well as lose. What else could teen sports possibly be about?
As Masha Gessen recently argued in The New Yorker, trans rights are reproductive rights. And so these two threads in Power Alley are one. Whether in Brazil or the U.S., access to trans healthcare and access to abortion are intrinsically linked. In our fight for bodily autonomy, we need each other, we are each other. (Trans people get abortions! Cis people take hormones!) Don’t fight for trans people, because your rights could be next. Don’t fight for abortion, because restrictions also endanger people with planned pregnancies. Why build coalitions from self-interest when self-interest should be implied? If I’m on the team and you’re on the team, we lose and win together.
Power Alley is now playing in limited theatres.
This really hit home : “Not solidarity inspired by self-preservation, but solidarity born from genuine care.”