Review: Her Lesbian Web Connects Them All
Dakota Johnson is a Millennial baby gay in Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s ‘Am I Ok?’
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰½
Romance: ✰✰
Sex: ✰✰✰
Storytelling: ✰✰
Performance: ✰✰✰
Yearning: ✰✰✰✰
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Light spoilers ahead.
Written by Ali Romig
There’s a dark underbelly to yearning. I know, I know. Reader, I can see you right now—aghast, jaw on the floor, about to chuck your phone into the nearest river or shallow pool of standing water. Just wait! I promise, we haven’t been lying to you. Yearning can be beautiful, passionate, visceral, a staple of the queer experience. But as our namesake might indicate, we are purveyors of all kinds of yearning here, and the truth is that yearning with no payoff is kind of just…boring?
I thought about this a lot while watching the Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne directed feature Am I OK? The film premiered at Sundance in 2022 to much acclaim, and its wide release has been highly anticipated. When Max announced it would begin streaming this June, I was obviously chomping at the bit to press play. Dakota Johnson playing a lesbian? Sign me up! (Despite myself, I find her charming!) And while the movie itself tackles some really interesting questions surrounding a second coming-of-age, friendship, and naming your sexuality later in life, it never really gets past these larger “ideas” to create a fully realized world. Characters that remain flat, tension that never satisfyingly builds, and a kind of spiritless yearning that never manages to incite convincing action all hold this film back, despite its potential.
Am I OK? follows two best friends on the precipice of change. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and Jane (Sonoya Mizuno) know everything about each other—or so they think. It turns out, both are keeping major secrets. After Jane reveals that she’s being transferred to London for work, Lucy confides that she thinks she’s a lesbian. This kickstarts a new era for the friends, as Jane tries to get Lucy to open herself up to new experiences before she leaves.
From the jump, it’s obvious to the viewer that Jane is a very bull-by-the-horns type person. She is constantly trying to push Lucy out of her comfort zone—for better or for worse—and when she gets the opportunity to transfer to London, she accepts immediately, not even bothering to ask her long term, live-in boyfriend how he feels about it before assuming he’ll go with her. Lucy on the other hand is timid. Any definitive action seems to overwhelm her—including coming out at the age of thirty-two, or pursuing her desires in a way that risks failure. In one of the more potent moments of the film, Jane drags Lucy to a lesbian bar even though Lucy tells her she’s not ready. While there, Jane makes out with another woman on the dance floor like it’s nothing, despite this being the very thing Lucy feels paralyzed in the face of. While Jane is only trying to help, to Lucy it feels like a slight—as if Jane were asking, why is this so hard for you?
I appreciated this scene, and related to it. I think anyone with this kind of anxiety can understand what it feels like to watch someone easily tackle the things you yourself are fearful of—as if they’re pointing out some kind of failure in your makeup. Unfortunately for Am I OK?, not many of the film's moments felt as authentic as this one. The central tension is between Lucy and Jane, but I didn’t sense a genuine or easy connection between the characters—and for the most part, Jane remained underwritten. Mizuno did the best she could with the material she was given, but Jane never fully came alive and her journey felt like an afterthought.
Dakota Johnson is clearly the star of this film, but even Lucy’s arc felt flat. We never really get to exist in these characters' worlds or get access to their interiority. Like I said, the movie deals in ideas, but characters have to be more than ideas. We understand that Lucy feels weird about coming out later in her life, but we don’t learn any more about her relationship with sex, romance, desire, or love. It’s almost as if she’s born when the movie starts, and exists without a past.
The best part of the movie is watching Johnson as Lucy awkwardly flirt with her coworker, Brittany (Kiersey Clemons). This is fun for a while, until it becomes painfully obvious that it’s not going anywhere (because Brittany is straight…despite leading Lucy on…which, idk, haven’t we seen enough movies like this?). Hence my note about unrealized yearning = boredom. For me and Lucy both! Rather than watching Lucy fall headfirst into her first lesbian situationship, we get a lot of Dakota Johnson doing this ▼
In terms of tone, I wasn’t able to pinpoint this film or where it was trying to sit. Johnson and Mizuno play things fairly grounded, but they are surrounded by a cast of characters that feel like they are in another movie entirely. Molly Gordon (whom I usually love) is here playing a Great Value brand version of Meg Stalter’s character in Hacks, and Sean Hayes plays Jane’s boss as if he were straight out of a DCOM. It’s confusing! The jokes, too, feel a bit tired. There’s a lot of talk about “vag” and whether or not it’s scary. Yawn. And of course, we have the requisite coming-out-movie scene of Lucy googling “am I gay?” It just feels like I’ve seen this so many times at this point! Am I being a grumpy-puss?
Listen, the movie isn’t all bad. There were some genuinely giggle-worthy moments—like when Tig Notaro makes a cameo as the guru at a “hammock retreat” or when Dakota Johnson has to reply “yes” to the question “boobs in mouth?” And of course, I think it’s great to have more films that represent the experience of coming out as an adult—because of course it’s never too late to figure out who you are, or change who you are, or—in the words of Hannah Horvath—"become who I am”! These are all fabulous messages….this movie, however? Is just OK.
You can stream Am I OK? on Max now.
Hard agree. An underwhelming affair overall 😞
A millennial nightmare