WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Vision Films just dropped their new romantic comedy, Tell Me I Love You, featuring Kaniehtiio Horn as Melanie, an aspiring music producer that is alluringly bisexual.
Melanie, Ally, and Ben are three musicians who went to college together and dream of making their music-dreams a reality. However, the three do not have much money between them and need to find the funds to produce their first demo. Melanie finds out if she gets married, she has access to a trust fund worth over $450,000. Meanwhile, Ally accidentally tells her family that she is engaged to avoid being set up with her high school boyfriend. Whew. So, the three roommates hatch a plan to all marry each other, snag the trust fund money, and record the demo.
In the beginning of the film, Melanie’s is not open to any hard commitments in relationships. Not to partners, and not to a preference for one sex over the other. Throughout Melanie’s conversations with her friends and family, it is evident that she is very proudly bisexual. Melanie does a great job of openly talking about her sexuality with others in her life. She has a nonchalant attitude about who she is dating. Melanie does not want to be tied down (unless it’s for a trust fund, of course) highlighting that for many bisexual women, they’re down to simply date, hook up, love, and whatever else they feel like doing. We love to see it!
While generally, Mel does not want to be in a committed relationship, she attends a yoga class and has a very sexually tense encounter with her yoga teacher, Cassie. Mel ends up attending more and more of Cassie’s classes, and eventually, Cassie invites her to a party. Mel and Cassie hook up that night for the first time. The two begin dating and have the purest lesbian relationship you’ve ever seen, right around the same time that Melanie hatched her plans with her roommates. For the first time in a long time, Melanie finds herself falling in love. Finding love in a yoga class, how cute is that?
Cassie gets to see many of Melanie’s past relationships, and also be a part of the crazy scheme Melanie has fallen into with her best friends. While the couple does have a few arguments over how wild Melanie’s life currently is, they do stay together and form quite a love story over the arc of the film. Thus, the focus of the movie actually had very little to do with Melanie and Cassie.
So, why are Melanie and Cassie even important?
Melanie is a main character in the film as part of her throuple with Ally and Ben, obviously. However, what really makes Mel’s character significant is that she is so beautifully, confidently herself. In the film, Melanie never even acknowledges her sexuality. It is chatted about when she talks about her hookups and relationships, both with men and women. When Melanie announces to her family that she married Ben, and later has sex with him, no one bats an eyelash. Similarly, when Melanie dates Cassie, her friends gas her up and are genuinely so happy for her. This makes Melanie’s sexuality and who she chooses to love completely, beautifully, normal. Finally, a rom-com about a bisexual woman that does not focus on her sexuality or coming out as the main plot point! Thank goodness.
By making Melanie’s sexuality a background factor in the film, the writers allow her to purely exist and take up space as anyone else of any sexuality would. Horn does a great job with Melanie’s character, too, as viewers can see that she is completely comfortable with her character and her presence in the world. To see a group of actors and characters present a bisexual woman so acceptingly makes the film even more layered and diverse.
Speaking of layering, the film itself has just… SO many things going on. From Ally, Ben, and Mel getting married, to recording the demo, to all the different sex scenes, to weddings, and family gatherings, there are a whole lot of plot points packed into an hour and twenty minutes. Viewers of Tell Me I Love You will surely never be bored as every five minutes it seems something crazy happens. The movie itself almost plays like a show as you are left with a cliff hanger and it goes straight into the next scene. What is great about this, however, is that with so much going on the focus is not on Melanie’s bisexuality.
With a lot of bisexual and lesbian main character films, the focus is solely on their sexuality and coming out. These films are great, especially for baby gays looking for comfort and finding themselves in the media. However, there are not many films out there with bisexual women as the lead where their coming out story is not the focus. Tell Me I Love You does a great job of presenting Melanie just as she is, and highlighting her confidence in her sexuality, and that being bisexual is normal!
You can stream Tell Me I Love You now on Amazon Prime Video.
