Yes climax
2019 · 11m · Estados Unidos , Francia
Directed by Oriane Playner
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
A young girl discovers her own body through sexuality, unlearning self-sexualization as she learns about self-pleasure, in a story framed by her relationship with her mother and the taboo and miseducation around female self-pleasure in the United States.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's weird that the most transgressive thing a short can do right now is treat a girl's sexuality with tenderness instead of shame or exploitation—Playner's refusal to sensationalize the premise is actually the subversion, and it works precisely because it shouldn't.
Playner positions herself within a lineage of feminist cinema that reclaims the body as subject rather than object, and the formal restraint—the sensuality achieved through what's withheld rather than shown—demonstrates real curatorial maturity for an 11-minute work.
The decision to frame this through the mother-daughter relationship rather than isolation transforms what could be clinical education into something genuinely intimate; that one structural choice—making the mother's own miseducation the emotional spine—is what elevates this from important to unforgettable.