My First Film review – charismatic new star beefs up audacious grad school-style project

Slippery and unsubtle, Zia Anger’s film about a film-maker is saved from self-indulgence by its sly humour

Rising star Odessa Young brings just the right amount of spontaneity, youthful exuberance and charisma to keep this hyperdimensional little ouroboros of a story about the actual director’s film-making experiences from seeming insufferably self-indulgent. So credit should also go to director Zia Anger herself for decent helming and casting instincts, because it all sort of works, even if it feels like a grad school project gone rogue.

Young plays Vita, a young woman who wants to make a movie that is more or less about herself, even though in her voiceover she keeps foregrounding the differences between her real story and the fiction she is creating. “Real” Vita has two mothers, a couple who conceived Vita with the help of a gay male friend; also, as an adult, Vita has had two abortions. In the film she’s making, starring her friend Dina (Devon Ross), the character based on Vita has had only one abortion and has only one mother who has gone missing.

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