‘Girls Like Girls’ like Hayley Kiyoko

Singer-songwriter, actress, novelist, screenwriter, and director Hayley Kiyoko laughs when I compare Girls Like Girls to Russian nesting dolls and agrees the description fits. First, there was her song and accompanying music video that Kiyoko co-directed but didn’t appear in as the short illustrated the story of blossoming love between two teenage girls. Next, was her 2023 young adult novel in which 17-year-old newcomer Coley falls hard for vivacious popular girl Sonya. And now, the story transfers to the screen as Kiyoko’s feature film directing debut.

“When I released the song in 2015, I wasn’t confident in who I was,” Kiyoko says in conversation in San Francisco shortly before Girls Like Girls’ appearance at Frameline, its only film festival screening. “I knew who I was, but I wasn’t accepting the word ‘lesbian’ in such a public way. 

“Then I realized when people were sharing the music video, people were like, ‘Oh my gosh, is that a movie?’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never been able to buy a ticket to a movie and see my experience told through someone like me and my perspective ever.’

“And so that planted the seed of a 10-year journey, figuring out how to become a director and how to get a movie made, and at many points, the movie wasn’t going to happen, and I was like, ‘You know what? I need to take control of my destiny. If I die tomorrow, this story needs to be out there,’ so I wrote the YA novel. Every little Russian doll has been kind of birthed through a creative place of necessity, and now we have the film, finally.”

Girls Like Girls is specific in its storytelling as Coley (Maya de Costa), smarting over the recent loss of her mother, and awkwardly getting to know her father, Curtis (Zach Braff), sees a glimmer of light when she meets vivacious Sonya (Myra Malloy). Sonya has a boorish boyfriend, Trenton (Levi Hawke, son of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman), but as the girls’ friendship evolves, it is not only Coley nursing deeper feelings. 

It is a movie in which young women grappling with their sexuality and first crushes and relationships will see their own experience reflected. At the same time, Girls Like Girls is one of those films that captures what it is like to be 17 and in the throes of passion, regardless of gender or sexuality. It is a movie for conjuring memories, according to Kiyoko.

“Every single person, no matter who you love, it takes you back to that person who you were confused by, or you had to confront, or maybe never confronted. We all have that experience,” she says. “You think you’re gonna marry that person. It feels like life or death. It can be soul-crushing.”

Kiyoko received 4,000 audition tapes for the role of Coley, and found 18-year-old de Costa on the very first one. But out of that pile, she also found Malloy, seeing in her the girl that would capture Coley’s heart. In the two of them Kiyoko can see herself reflected back in her own film, in which Asian Americans take center stage.

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“Growing up, half Japanese, half white, I never saw myself as someone who could be the lead of a story, and to have that space and opportunity, and you know that’s obviously reflected in not putting myself in the music video,” she days. “And now, 10 years later, I am able to cast two Asian leads. These beautiful women reflect how I look and how I see myself. It’s been so healing and fulfilling to be able to create a space for someone like Maya de Costa, who can now live her life believing that who she is, and what she looks like, and how she feels is important.”

Girls Like Girls comes out June 19 in Bay Area theaters as a Pride month release. It is also opening a week after the San Francisco Giants’ Pride celebration was marred by three Giants’ pitchers violating their uniform code by adding Bible verses to their caps in protest of Pride. The controversy has metastasized nationwide, revealing that vein of homophobia that still pulses in too many corners. For Kiyoko, it is a reminder of why films like hers are not just entertainment. They are necessary.

“When you’re under 18, a lot of the times you don’t have the ability to create boundaries of physical separation, and so you’re having to navigate not only what the world is saying online and in the news, but you’re also navigating people who are supposed to unconditionally love you,  but who lead with fear and hate,” she says. “I think that that’s why this movie feels so lifesaving, because it is a space to dream, it’s a space to process, it’s a space to heal these parts of ourselves that maybe we’ve had to go through alone.

“Releasing a movie called Girls Like Girls in this political climate feels radical,” she adds. “We need to send messages and signals to the world, young people everywhere, and just people in general that there are kind, loving, accepting people that want us here and want us to have the ability to dream the best life that we deserve.”

Girls Like Girls is playing in Bay Area theaters.

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