Review: The coming out process is extra hairy in tender, thoughtful Bouchra

I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian household, and spent more than twenty years in the church. I was taught a lot of ideas about homosexuality that are just plain wrong: that it's a sin, that it's a choice, etc. etc. When I realized I was gay, and really came to terms with the fact of it -- that it was something I didn't have a say in, and it was something I couldn't ignore -- I wasn't sure how to approach coming out. I was planning to move to LA soon, so I thought maybe I could just not tell my parents, at least for the time being. 

But due to various circumstances, I ended up coming out to my parents earlier than intended. They responded with love, but it was still a hard thing for them to hear. They, too, had been subjected to a lot of lies about homosexuality, and they feared for what my life might look like: marginalization, loneliness, persecution. For about a week, I only heard from my mom via email, which was just not the way we communicated. Finally, I texted her and asked if we were only going to email from now on. She called me immediately, we talked for hours on the phone, crying and finding our way back to each other, and ever since, things have been great. Sure, there have been rough patches here and there, as is the case in any family. But my parents are a bastion of acceptance, love, and support, people I know I can always count on, and they welcomed my now-husband into the family with open arms. (I often say he's now the favorite child in the family, and for good reason -- he's awesome.)

With this background, it's perhaps unsurprising that I found Orian Yani Barki and Meriem Bennani's Bouchra so resonant, touching, and quietly thrilling. The film draws from Bennani's own experiences of coming our to her parents, and the nearly decade-long silence about the subject that ensued. The film adapts actual phone calls from Bennani's life into dialogue, and the result is a film that feels authentic to its bones, even though it stars a cast of anthropomorphized animals. I imagine most queer people who watch this movie will be able to see themselves somewhere within it, despite this story being so specific to Bennani's experience and cultural background. It's a reminder that being queer places you in a history, a community, a family that reaches across borders, through time, and into every corner of the world. We have always been here, and we will always be here, our lives mirroring and rhyming with each other's in unexpected ways.

The film centers on Bouchra, a young woman living in New York City, and struggling to finish work on a film inspired by her coming out experience, particularly her mother's refusal to talk to her about it after receiving her coming-out letter almost a decade earlier. Bouchra is a wolf-woman: wolf head, human-ish hands and feet, but covered in fur. The other characters in the movie are all animals as well: Bouchra's ex is a cow named Nikki, there are some sheep in her family, one of her best friends is a lizard. It gives the film a layer of fantasy that I think settles nicely onto the proceedings which are pretty low-key, lived in. Just watching a documentary about this process with actual humans would be fine, but would maybe feel a bit boring at times, depending on the viewer. But with the animal element, every moment gets this extra shot of aesthetic excitement, and serves as perhaps a subtle reinforcement that queerness is a natural thing.

(I would be remiss not to mention that, yes, this movie is absolutely going to go triple platinum with the queer furry community. There are a couple steamy scenes that don't hold back. Like...this movie is sexy, horny, unabashed in those moments. One character's underwear is shown with claw-mark rips in them. Do with that information what you will.)

Bouchra especially excited me with how it blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and sort of wraps around itself, telling the story of its own making. One of the cinematic cheat codes to make me love your movie is to get a little meta, and this movie certainly does that. Sometimes you'll watch a scene, and then get pulled out of it to see the scribbled storyboards Bouchra is making in her apartment, looking out at the rain-drenched city beyond her window. By the end of the film, the curtain is fully pulled back, and it caught me by such surprise, I think I actually gasped. The film within the film is presented as a sort of therapy, a mending of the relationship between Bouchra and her mother Aicha, still living in Morocco and refusing to talk about her daughter's identity. And then the larger film itself feels like it's maybe serving the same purpose for Bennani and her own mother, and could be a blueprint for anyone watching and struggling in a similar situation.

I saw my own experience in Bouchra's struggle, though thankfully the silence that settled over me and my parents was only a week, and not nine years. We watch Bouchra try to broach the subject with Aicha over and over again, calling and wanting to understand why her mother reacted the way she did back then, why they couldn't just talk about it, why they still can't talk about it. And when Aicha retreats, Bouchra lets her, knowing she can try again another day. I found this so touching, and I think it's a great example of leading with grace and generosity during the coming out process. Not everyone will respond the way we want them to, the "right way," but they're coming from their own experience and background and may need time to adjust and form new schema to slot this information into. If we can just lead with love (and patience), maybe our loved ones can get there. Sometimes, it just takes time. (And maybe the making of an animated semi-documentary starring anthropomorphized animals.)