Category: Film

Normally I only write about the transgender issue, but in the case of Afterlives I’ve had to make an exception, because, although it might have its heart in the right place, its head in so many wrong places, it’s mind blowing.

On a positive note, director Kevin B. Lee, chose an interesting aesthetic for the film, using his desktop to interact with film clips and his chosen talking heads, which works. What doesn’t work, however, is his piss-poor analysis of why violence indoctrinates. He starts in the right place, looking at the example of ISIS’s ‘blockbuster’ recruitment video – Flames of War – analysing it frame by frame, creating entries in a spreadsheet.

On the one hand, there is your typical AGP bingo, our man Manitas always knew he was trans, he’d been suicidal about having to live a lie, etc and so on. I’d expected that. And like a lot of gangster movies, there is more sympathy for the violent quasi-psychopathic character than is really reasonable. I might have expected that too. Ultimately Manitas (even as Emilia) can’t bear that his wife goes off and creates her own life with a new man, taking the children with her. Again, no surprises there. And of course, Manitas as Emilia is at the centre of all the women’s lives, particularly Rita whose existence is very much as a simp – she exists just for him, her love unrequited.