Ashley (2013)

Candice: "It's okay we don't judge here."

By Dean Matthew Ronalds
With Jennifer Taylor, Michael Madsen, Lauren C. Mayhew

Even though Ashley looked like it had quite a low rating for so few votes, the fact that it was dealing with LGBT themes and cutting had me decide to give it a shot. Also, the poster was quite original with a play on black and white and colors.

Ashley is a 17 year old girl who prefers to remain silent for as much as she can. Things are pretty bad at home for her as her mother feels incompetent in face of Ashley's silence and refusal to eat and when the school psychiatrist discovers that Ashley has cigarette burns on her he decides to send someone at her home to make sure everything is going fine--therefore adding even more pressure on the frail relation between Ashley and her mother. Ashley is also gay and is bullied for it by the girls in her school while being physically abused by most guys. She seeks an exit through internet chat rooms.

I was highly disappointed with the film as the themes of self-harm, online dating and being a gay student in high school are all themes that I was very much looking forward to but they turned out to be absolutely ridiculed. I thought I was looking at some potentially good ideas go to ruin over and over again. The one relationship that Ashley has could have been a really good one, instead it was on focus for less than 10 minutes and most of them had Ashley not saying a word and looking really uncomfortable.

There are not many movies that dare tackle the subject of cutting. I first saw it being approached in Thirteen (2003) and I thought it was done in a fairly good manner, but here it was simply a farce, even trying to have the spectator assume that Ashley has sexual releases through cutting. Not to mention that it looked absolutely far from the way someone would cut, as anyone knows that cutting near your wrists is a common way to commit suicide.

The internet chat was ridiculous and very poorly done, but the most unbelievable part was that a young woman who doesn't talk to anyone would randomly give her phone number to someone she barely met, while her mother and her boyfriend are in the next room and could have heard her talk at anytime.

Furthermore, the movie tried to reinforce this idea that every woman who loves women has been abused or raped, or both actually, which was a very irritating idea. I thought a semblance of redemption was actually coming up when the end came to a close, but no, they had to show us a completely useless shot of Ashley going topless... I guess they had to please the straight male spectator so he'd forget everything prior and give the film a good rating just based on the fact that mammary flesh was the last thing in his mind. Sad.

There were a few good scenes filmed in an interesting angle, but most of it was really bad. The one thing I actually enjoyed was the use of music.

I liked: The music.

I disliked: Just about everything.

12/100
I know this will not be true for every film and there are certainly exceptions, but I'll personally be more wary of lesbian movies written and directed by males.