Georg Csarmann

The first scene of Maggie Brill’s All At Once opens with a well-known trope – and that is very much meant as a compliment given how familiar the situation will feel for most people. Florence (Allegra Leguizamo) paces around her bedroom, trying to find the right words to say to another girl. The way she contemplates the possible phrasings makes us feel like it has to be a message for her high-school crush, Supriya (Ashley Ganger)… or maybe Florence is just nervous about her joint valedictorian speech, especially given that she is a budding writer herself. When Supriya arrives at her doorstep the next day, she immediately begins complaining about her boyfriend – something that clearly unsettles Florence, even if she gives little away. Yet we keep wondering: is there something more than friendship between Florence and Supriya? This uncertainty lingers throughout the entire film – a question Florence has to come to terms with herself after the two of them share a walk through Central Park.

“The film we wished we had seen when we were younger”

The title All At Once is a perfect hint to the film’s core, but what makes this story particularly beautiful is how it depicts its protagonist’s sexual awakening through a kind of explosive quietness. Brill trusts the emotions laid out on screen enough to treat them with restraint, neither heightening nor downplaying the gravity of how just one day can change your entire life as a teenager. The film explores the vastness of an adolescent girl’s inner world with the subtlety necessary to take those emotions seriously, balancing this weight with a sense of levity and charm.

Brill, who shares co-writing credits with Radhika Mehta, told us that she and her team wanted to “make the film we wished we had seen when we were younger.“ While All At Once deals with queer sexual awakening and the inherent tension that can accompany it, the filmmaker explained that she wanted to avoid focusing her short on “the conflict around coming out or the drama of secret relationships”. Instead, she chose to center the film around “these softer, quieter moments of internal struggle and self-discovery – how feelings of sudden attraction, excitement, and fear all tangle together.“ In that regard, she succeeds beautifully.

Ashley Ganger (L) and Allegra Leguizamo star as co-valedictorians in All at Once

One of the main reasons why the unfolding story feels so realistic and natural is Brill’s calm filmmaking style and the short’s sensitive portrayal of everything left unsaid between its two protagonists. While we, as an audience, can sense the larger picture of everything that’s happening without the characters spelling it out, it helps that the actors expertly portray the closeness blossoming between these two young women. Leguizamo – who S/W fans might recognize from Flash Warning, Lockdown, Quaker & Scotty’s Vag – gives an especially nuanced performance, while DoP Sarah Greenbaum (Let, Tragedy Babes) – alongside Steadicam operator Sabrina Marki – captures the melancholic atmosphere of those last few days of the school year.

All at Once was inspired by Brill’s own experiences “growing up in New York City and falling in love for the first time during the summer between high school and college.” With the director revealing that six years after their “closeted relationship”, she reunited with her “first love and now dear friend”, Mehta, who also serves as an executive producer, to make this film. Already a bittersweet viewing experience without that context, knowing how much of it is influenced by Brill’s past, that she is still friends with Mehta and that they made All at Once together is almost enough to break your heart (in a good way).

“All at Once is for the 17-year-old versions of us and any other young queer people who have navigated first love in isolation and craved to see their reality reflected on screen.“ – writer/director Brill

To be completely honest, at first, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was the right person to write about All At Once, as a heterosexual cis-man in his 30s. Then again, one of the biggest strengths of a great film is that they speak to a universal truth through their specificity. Even though I’ve never been in the shoes of a teenage girl discovering romantic feelings for another girl in her class, I know what it’s like to have a crush on someone who may never return those feelings. It’s the kind of uncertainty that can make someone cynically declare that they don’t even believe in love – as Florence does on her walk with Supriya – until they finally experience that rush of endorphins themselves. Florence, at least, gets to discover something fundamental about herself in the process – her own kind of happy ending? Or possibly the beginning of something more?

I personally have a soft spot for minimalist, dialogue-driven two-handers, and All At Once is the kind of walking-and-talking New York romantic dramedy that reminds me of similar American independent films, which I’m especially fond of. Brill herself acknowledged this influence when she described the visual style of her short as “inspired by films like Before Sunrise and Past Lives“, adding that it was always her intention to have “these dialogue-heavy scenes play out in long, uninterrupted takes.” Judging from All At Once, Brill certainly has the potential to follow in the footsteps of the most prominent voices of this cinematic tradition.

In fact, the short also serves as a proof of concept for a feature-length version, with Brill explaining that she specifically chose to “focus on the beginning of Florence and Supriya’s love story to explore Florence’s journey of self-discovery”. Adding that she felt it captured one of “those rare moments in life where someone we meet brings us closer to our true selves.” I, for one, can’t wait to follow the rest of Brill’s filmmaking journey. Next up, the director is developing a new short film – a horror coming-of-age story titled LEECH – which is currently seeking funding ahead of a planned summer production.