What to watch: The Mattachine Family
Exploring the complexity of queer relationships and our expectations of family.
Written by Danny Vallentine and directed by his husband Andy Vallentine, The Mattachine Family explores the complexity of queer relationship dynamics and our expectations of family.
Drawing on their own relationship and experiences, this story from the Vallentines focuses on Thomas and Oscar - a gay couple in Los Angeles.
After their first foster child returns to his birth mother, Thomas and Oscar find they have different ideas of what making a family actually means.
This is thought-provoking terrain and a good conversation-starter if you want to dig into how queer people experience the concept of family and the heteronormative assumptions that shape the world.
While the narrative pace of this film gets a bit bogged down in exposition and dialogue, it makes the case for queer people embracing parenthood as the aspirational version of adulting. It's a point of view that is easy to understand, even if it's not a point of view that you ascribe to.
The film stars Nico Tortorella and Juan Pablo Di Pace, with strong support from Emily Hampshire.
The Mattachine Family is distributed by Peccadillo Pictures
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