Romeos is a German Drama/Romance film released in 2011. The movie is queer and independent, and the largest creation from director Sabine Bernardi. The synopsis of the film (according to Google) is: “Lucas, a transgendered woman becoming a man, is stuck in a female residential hall.”; getting past misgendering and mislabeling Lukas, the summary significantly sells the movie short. The film does focus on a boy named Lukas, who is a FTM (female-to-male) transman, who is also wrongly sorted into the girls residential hall, however the film focuses more on his showing what it means to be transmasculine, and his romance with another man, Fabio (hence the title Romeos). The film is independent, foreign, and low budget, but while it is a b-grade
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The movie was so extremely accurate and conscientious of trans individuals worries, doubts, problems, hopes, actions, and all sorts of queer interactions and feelings. Something so rare that movies get right let alone attempt to show. The movie showed Lukas taking his testosterone shots, showed him in a binder, showed his worries about appearing flat and layering all his clothes despite visibly sweating - the actor studied and perfected his movements transmen often do -, not swimming because he’d have to take his clothes off, the difficulties of having his gender recognized and respected, being misgendered, being referred to by his birth name, getting asked, ‘have you had The Surgery’,’what’s in your pants’- his identity not being respected because he hasn’t had ‘The Surgery’-, the struggles of identifying as trans and gay, and layers upon layers of other small things. The movie did a fantastic and real representation of a trans individual. Another example is the woman, Ine, his supposed best-friend and whenever she was angry, she’d refer to Lukas with she/her pronouns and his dead name - and while very horrible was a scarily realistic moment that I’m happy the movie included. Something the movie also included which I thought was unique was Lukas vlogging his transition and being obsessed with his body along with researching top …show more content…
Fabio. Oh Fabio. Fabio is portrayed as the ‘manliest of men’ and was introduced as a person Lukas simply wanted to look like. However, as the film continued, Lukas’ staring moved to more and more of a romantic one with Fabio being openly gay and highly interested in Lukas (pre-knowing that he was trans). Fabio’s and Lukas’ interactions rarely move to anything above physical and while it does feature intimate scenes, there is little dialogue talking about feelings for one another (that doesn’t involve fighting). When it is revealed to Fabio that Lukas is trans (done by Lukas’ kid sister outting him), Fabio rejects Lukas and uses slurs and is just generally violent about dating a transguy yet the movie continues to show Fabio falling for Lukas - which in a way is wrong, this idea of ‘hey you can find love despite being unwanted and even if the guy is violent towards you maybe give him a chance.’ But I digress. More in the same fashion, the title of the movie alludes to the dynamic from Romeo and Juliet shown in the most quoted line, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”, why must you (Romeo/Lukas) be who you are and not someone who’d be easier to fall in love with. I personally feel that this is again, a slippery slope of a portrayal of a relationship. The relationship is, again, mostly shown to be physical, the connection being just in ‘eye-fucking’ and odd scenes where the two physically chase each other with little talk of interests or getting
The movie was so extremely accurate and conscientious of trans individuals worries, doubts, problems, hopes, actions, and all sorts of queer interactions and feelings. Something so rare that movies get right let alone attempt to show. The movie showed Lukas taking his testosterone shots, showed him in a binder, showed his worries about appearing flat and layering all his clothes despite visibly sweating - the actor studied and perfected his movements transmen often do -, not swimming because he’d have to take his clothes off, the difficulties of having his gender recognized and respected, being misgendered, being referred to by his birth name, getting asked, ‘have you had The Surgery’,’what’s in your pants’- his identity not being respected because he hasn’t had ‘The Surgery’-, the struggles of identifying as trans and gay, and layers upon layers of other small things. The movie did a fantastic and real representation of a trans individual. Another example is the woman, Ine, his supposed best-friend and whenever she was angry, she’d refer to Lukas with she/her pronouns and his dead name - and while very horrible was a scarily realistic moment that I’m happy the movie included. Something the movie also included which I thought was unique was Lukas vlogging his transition and being obsessed with his body along with researching top …show more content…
Fabio. Oh Fabio. Fabio is portrayed as the ‘manliest of men’ and was introduced as a person Lukas simply wanted to look like. However, as the film continued, Lukas’ staring moved to more and more of a romantic one with Fabio being openly gay and highly interested in Lukas (pre-knowing that he was trans). Fabio’s and Lukas’ interactions rarely move to anything above physical and while it does feature intimate scenes, there is little dialogue talking about feelings for one another (that doesn’t involve fighting). When it is revealed to Fabio that Lukas is trans (done by Lukas’ kid sister outting him), Fabio rejects Lukas and uses slurs and is just generally violent about dating a transguy yet the movie continues to show Fabio falling for Lukas - which in a way is wrong, this idea of ‘hey you can find love despite being unwanted and even if the guy is violent towards you maybe give him a chance.’ But I digress. More in the same fashion, the title of the movie alludes to the dynamic from Romeo and Juliet shown in the most quoted line, “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”, why must you (Romeo/Lukas) be who you are and not someone who’d be easier to fall in love with. I personally feel that this is again, a slippery slope of a portrayal of a relationship. The relationship is, again, mostly shown to be physical, the connection being just in ‘eye-fucking’ and odd scenes where the two physically chase each other with little talk of interests or getting