By Sofia Majstorovic

Not every Catholic parent is a transphobic mouthpiece for the Vatican itself. This is the simple but somewhat radical territory that Luis De Filippis’ debut feature Something You Said Last Night operates in. Trapped in their own sullenness, sisters Renata (Carmen Madonia) and Siena (Paige Evans) join their enthusiastic albeit financially strained parents on a summer outing to no-name, U.S.A. for an extended series of dinner silences, beach days, and parking-lot parties that culminate rather symmetrically into a trip back home that is less rancorous than the journey there.  

Never before has a film tackled the relationship between boredom and vaping with so little shame. Where cigarettes in cinema have of course accompanied traditional routes of rebellion, vapes, with their respective ease of use and transmission, re-envision smoking in De Filippis’ handling as a shoulder-shrugging acceptance of social (or societal) collapse—a stylized apathy that bears some resemblance to coolness. The signature crackle of Renata’s nicotine delivery system contributes sonically to the heightened reality of Something You Said Last Night. Bumping a soundtrack of crumpling plastic water bottles and lazily lapping waters, De Filippis’ film is in no small part indebted to those gritty-pretty Floridian films overrun by scampering adolescents that have emerged over the last decade—Spring Breakers (2012), American Honey (2016), and The Florida Project (2017), to name a few. De Filippis’ actors smartly riff upon Sean Baker’s voyeuristic naturalism with welcome flourishes of Italian authenticity, from rabble-rousing code-switching to obnoxious chewing noises straight out of The Sopranos. 

The question remains, however, of the extent to which films of this loitering ilk miss out on the necessary artfulness that separates a cinematic experience from watching home movies. I myself longed for the sort of distressing accelerationism, or really any attempt at abstraction, of a film with similar domestic goals such Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (2001). Something You Said Last Night boasts a strong cast that winds through its script on impressively non-sentimental terms, however, what does one ultimately get out of observing businesslike scenes that are so beat-for-beat what a family vacation is actually like? Mini-catharsis? Feeling seen?

Sofia Majstorovic