The Big Picture
Summer Solstice
explores changing friendship dynamics from a transmasc perspective.- Noah Schamus' thoughtful direction infuses the film with authenticity and specificity.
- Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Marianne Rendón do an excellent job playing multi-dimensional characters who are flawed but easy to root for.
Maintaining friendships as an adult can be hard. Without the benefit of seeing your friends every day in the high school hallway or sharing a dorm with them in college, it requires more effort to keep in touch. This can be further compounded by factors like living a large distance from each other, working in various fields, or even just developing different priorities and interests. As you grow up, you can naturally grow apart.
And yet, there’s something special and irreplaceable about your friends from those periods of your life. It’s a magical thing, being able to reminisce with someone, essentially time-traveling when talking about your fourth-period English teacher or the time you both got blackout drunk at a Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Summer Solstice captures both the challenges and beauty of this dynamic from a trans lens.
Summer Solstice
- Run Time
- 1 hr 21 min
- Director
- Noah Schamus
- Release Date
- June 14, 2024
- Actors
- Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Marianne Rendón, Mila Myles, Yaron Lotan, Monica Sanborn
What Is 'Summer Solstice' About?
Summer Solstice centers around a shy, queer trans man named Leo (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), who spends his days going to acting classes, auditioning, and trying to find love — often in the wrong places, like with his classmate and friends-with-benefits, Alice (Monica Sanborn). His life is interrupted by his best friend Eleanor (Marianne Rendón) coming into town and dragging him on a road trip to upstate New York — the first time they’ve really spent together since Leo began transitioning. Eleanor is the opposite of Leo in nearly every way: straight, cisgender, and unafraid to speak her mind — even when she maybe shouldn’t. Their weekend getaway stirs up old feelings and new resentments alike and has the potential to either strengthen their friendship, getting it to a more honest and open place, or end it forever.
'Summer Solstice' Overflows With Authenticity and Specificity
For the sake of full transparency, I’m a cisgender lesbian with several close transmasc friends, which offered me a particularly interesting perspective and made this film highly personal. Queer people often have a specific language and way of interacting with each other — a unique bond and sense of community that emerges when they get together. Summer Solstice features a scene that captures this with gorgeous authenticity when Leo hangs out with his friends Oliver (Mila Myles) and Joe (Yaron Lotan), bonding over their shared love of the movie Cruising. Queer people have been so underrepresented in the media that we often latch onto things that we know are deeply problematic as, despite their flaws, they can make us feel seen, understood, and even empowered. (This is, in fact, a central theme of Sav Rodgers’ documentary Chasing Chasing Amy.) It’s affirming to have these spaces and conversations with fellow queer people — others who immediately “get it” and can understand firsthand.
However, it can be complicated to integrate someone who isn’t part of the community into the group, which we see through Eleanor, who feels isolated and left out. To compensate, she says some pretty careless and cringe-worthy things after a few glasses of wine. “Do you think I’m queering heterosexuality, maybe?” she asks at one point. “I just want to be in the club,” she muses in another, wishing she was queer and effectively ignoring the history of oppression and struggle that comes with the identity.
Eleanor acts inappropriately and self-centered, especially when it comes to Leo’s transition, but the film makes it clear that she behaves this way because she’s struggling with her own insecurity and identity. Writer-director Noah Schamus impressively handles her character throughout, holding Eleanor accountable for the harm she inflicts while having compassion for her own struggles. In lesser hands, Eleanor could veer into pure villain territory or be seen as a joke and not taken seriously, but Schamus’ direction combined with Rendón’s vulnerable and layered performance makes her feel like a real person.
There are simply things that Eleanor — like me — will never be able to relate to: the particular brand of body dysmorphia that trans people can struggle with as well as the rewarding kinship that they can tap into due to their shared experiences, for instance. Summer Solstice allows Eleanor to go on a journey parallel to Leo’s, where she must grapple with the fact there are things about Leo she won’t understand — and things that Leo might not want to share with her because of that. Throughout the film, she must learn to de-center herself and her own feelings about Leo’s transition, putting aside her selfish wants in order to support him and his boundaries instead.
Schamus takes many risks with this project, and this is one of the biggest. Leaning into this arc shows they trust the audience to see Eleanor as complex and flawed but ultimately redeemable, but it also proves that they aren’t afraid to call out cisgender people who make someone else’s transition about themselves. Schamus doesn’t shy away from putting the negative effects words and actions — even, on the surface, “well-meaning” ones — can have on full display.
'Summer Solstice' Lets Its Characters Be Flawed and Joyful
It’s important to note, however, that Summer Solstice is never exclusionary or alienating. It feels like a love letter to the transmac community, but people who aren’t trans or queer at all will still be able to connect with and enjoy it. It’s not a lecture but rather a specific take on a universal tale of love and friendship — topics everyone can relate to. It deals with tough subject matter, to be sure, but it does so with an abundance of joy, which is particularly refreshing for a story that centers on trans characters.
Summer Solstice is accessible to all kinds of people, and that’s due to the strong script, thoughtful direction, and Menuez’s subtle and charming performance. Menuez makes Leo easy to root for from the get-go, overflowing with patience, passion, and a disarmingly awkward charisma. He’s extremely likable, but he’s not an imperfect, untouchable pillar of morality either. Schamus allows him to have faults, letting himself be walked over at times and being short with Eleanor in others. He, too, feels like a fleshed-out, fully dimensional person, never claiming to speak for or trying to represent all trans people. It helps that he is far from the only trans person in the movie, so they’re not presented as a monolith.
Summer Solstice also offers a strong, somewhat meta-commentary on the state of trans representation in entertainment by having Leo be an actor. The film starts off with a dramatic, heavy-handed, and stereotypical monologue about top surgery that’s (thankfully) revealed to be for a project Leo is auditioning for, showing us the kind of roles he’s often offered. The casting directors then crudely pry into whether he’s transmasculine or transfeminine, portraying the kind of prying, exhausting questions trans people can be bombarded every day — even in professional settings. It’s heartening to see Leo prepare for a project that goes beyond that and figure out how to express his emotions by connecting with the material. It goes to show how impactful and therapeutic art can be.
The film is so strong when it focuses on the themes of friendship and identity that the romantic plots can feel a bit weaker. Leo’s relationship with Alice is given a tad too much screentime, and his other romantic subplots — while intriguing and sweet — are a bit underbaked and rushed as a result. Eleanor’s own relationship with her boyfriend Will happens completely offscreen, which is fine, but we don’t know as much about their dynamic as we need to for certain reveals and story beats to hit as hard as they probably should.
Still, Summer Solstice is a hell of a first feature, proving that Schamus has a strong and important voice and an extremely bright future as both a writer and director. Programmers, take note that this would make for a fantastic double-feature with Will & Harper, which also happens to be about a cisgender and trans friend road trip and is one of my favorite documentaries of the year. Not to sound corny, but this is the kind of film that has the power to change minds, hearts, and lives.
REVIEW
Summer Solstice
Noah Schamus' 'Summer Solstice' is a nuanced and authentic exploration of friendship and being transmasc.
- The film features excellent performances by Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Marianne Rendón.
- The characters feel dimensional and real, having both flaws and lovable qualities.
- Schamus has crafted a love letter to the trans community while still being relatable and enjoyable for all audiences.
- The romantic subplots feel slightly underdeveloped.
Summer Solstice opens in theaters in the U.S. starting June 14. Click below for showtimes near you.
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