Thaw
2023 · 18m · United States
Directed by Alex Bush
Genres: fantasy, LGBTQ+, romance
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tender
Two lovers retreat into a snowy, fable-like world where they swap clothes and gendered personas, shedding identity until only a blank slate remains.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The gender-swap premise dangles like it's going somewhere transgressive, but *Thaw* plays it straight—a tender fable about shedding identity that feels more like devotional cinema than the subversive genre-bend the setup promises.
Bush orchestrates a formally precise descent into mythic abstraction, where the landscape becomes a third character and the deliberate pacing of costume and movement recalls the rigorous fairy-tale logic of Pasolini or the Quays—a short aware of its own lineage.
The single masterstroke is the decision to make the clothes swap itself the emotional anchor rather than plot mechanics; that choice—where fabric becomes the only language left—is what lifts this from concept into something genuinely felt.
Reviews
Bush has crafted a love story which reveals the messy, evolving nature of identity and self-expression. In Thaw they sought to create a piece of work, rooted in a love of melodrama, art and folklore, which didn't fit with more traditional depictions of trans and gender fluid individuals and their communities, rather than a piece speaking to otherness.