Camila Comes Out Tonight review – nuanced portrait of young queer life

In writer-director Inés María Barrionuevo's third feature Camila Comes Out Tonight, adolescent womanhood is a force to be reckoned with. Under her observant direction, this tale of fluid sexuality and boisterous femininity sizzles beneath the Argentinian sun and glows with the blushed excitement of late-night escapades. Impressively, the tired trappings of the coming-of-age story are largely avoided as this high school drama finds a nuanced specificity in its portrait of young queer life in South America.

The aforementioned Camila (Nina Dziembrowski) is introduced in a rather clumsy opening scene during a museum school trip as she gazes at an image of a young woman punished for her sexuality. The early establishing of sexual oppression may be heavy-handed, but at least the concise manner in which Camila’s burgeoning self-discovery is contextualised wastes no time on patronising extrapolations about the process of coming out.

Barrionuevo is then quick to whisk Camila away to Buenos Aires with her younger sister Martina (Carolina Rojas) and mother Victoria (Adriana Ferrer) to live in her hospitalised grandmother’s apartment where the AC doesn’t work. Making matters worse, her new school is a strict and private institution that tightens the reigns of Camila’s headstrong fierceness. On her first day, she is instructed to remove the green ribbon tied to her backpack, a symbol of support for Argentina’s pro-abortion movement. This is the first and last intricate reference to Argentina’s socio-political climate, while the remaining nods appear on the nose and dealings with the empowerment of young women and military dictatorship fall short to lacklustre dialogue.

Navigating the school’s social standing amongst a sea of pale uniforms, Camila manages to fall into the orbit of like-minded teens. Her hedonistic desires are divided between Bruno (Diego Sanchéz) – a young man with one hoop ear-piercing, tattoos and a taste for trouble – and Clara (Maite Valero) – an enigmatic classmate whose intense stare has Camila weak at the knees – but both are greedy for her undelivered attention. It is unfortunate, then, by no fault of its own, that in one of the film’s most impactful and heated moments the line “let’s not talk about Bruno” is delivered and it's impossible to ignore the accidental nod to the Encanto soundtrack.

For a film enraptured in the thematics of coming of age, Camila Comes Out Tonight has no business being as stunning as it is and yet the film revels in its visual stylings. Constanza Sandoval’s cinematography is dazzling, as shadows fall across Camila’s face and leave her looking like a portrait subject. And thanks to the editing prowess of Sebastián Schjaer, the hues of skin shimmering with glitter and sweat make partying into a vivid experience that comes together in a mosaic of fingers in hair, bouncing necklaces, and flitting eyes.

Camila Comes Out Tonight may have benefited from a more streamlined plot (why is the taut tension between mother and daughter just abandoned? And did Camila’s grandmother really have a lesbian relationship with her neighbour?) to enhance its aesthetic. Still, this boisterous tale of queer youth flourishes with alluring emotional magnitude.

Camila Comes Out Tonight was screened as part of the BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival 2022. A UK release date is yet to be announced.