Due to technical difficulties, I’ve seen Giant Little Ones, front to back, three times now. At first, I was underwhelmed. After a revisit, my opinion improved. By the third viewing, I fully turned a corner. I suspect this film is wearing me down on purpose. Fourth time’s a charm?
Point being, had the stream worked better during my initial screening, this would’ve been a different review. Giant Little Ones’s chief flaw isn’t a horrible title (someone please tell me, what does it mean?) but its setting, a strange Canadian hamlet rife with gay panic and homophobia. This isn’t a throwback to an unenlightened era; the film takes place here and now. Being slightly off-key is always worse than hitting the wrong note altogether, and Giant Little Ones is frustratingly pitchy throughout.
The thing is, with repetition, you can overlook discordance. And so this tale of two teen friends, a couple of good-looking young men – jocks who are popular with the ladies at their high school – who hook up after a night of drunken revelry, succeeds despite the nagging sense that it was backwards engineered.
The problem isn’t that Franky (Josh Wiggins, stoic and sparkling) and Ballas (Darren Mann, depicting a bully from a John Hughes film) wouldn’t be attracted to each other. It’s the fallout, nuclear in their world, that seems vastly outsized for an upper-middle-class community where a random gay encounter should be met with full support or, at the very least, a shrug.
Nope. Franky is immediately ostracized by his mates on the swim team. His girlfriend promptly dumps him. Ballas, on the other hand, manages to avoid the backlash by falsely claiming Franky initiated the physical contact. (Ballas went down first.) He turns on a dime, transforming himself from Franky’s closest friend to his chief antagonist.
Directed by Keith Behrman, Giant Little Ones is handsomely shot and fluidly edited. Its best scenes alternate between EDM-fueled momentum and quiet pastoral languor. This juxtaposition dramatizes the various conflicts playing out in Franky’s life. Not only is his own sexuality suddenly in question, he’s also reckoning with the ongoing aftermath of his parents’ divorce, following his father’s outing as a gay man.
Franky’s strained relationship with his dad (played, with great warmth and kindness, by Kyle MacLachlan) acts as an external substitute for the conflict swirling within. Its highly satisfying resolution rescues Giant Little Ones from slipping into little more than a big-screen afterschool special. It also underscores the film’s central themes of indecision and self-discovery.
Giant Little Ones smartly avoids retreading territory recently covered by Love, Simon. This, technically, isn’t a gay romance. In fact, the most realistic relationships are between Franky and a girl, one platonic, with his queer friend Mouse (Niamh Wilson, the film’s comic relief), the other romantic, with Ballas’ sister Natasha (the radiant Taylor Hickson). The latter coupling is especially tender and sweet. Outcasts both, Franky and Natasha (who’s long been branded “a slut” by her peers), find connection in social exile.
Giant Little Ones, perhaps to the irritation of some, doesn’t answer many of the questions it raises. And that’s fine. This isn’t a simple story of teenage sexuality, but something deeper and richer, a tale about forgiveness and the courage to elevate love above labels.
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