‘Bottoms’ Director Emma Seligman is making a statement by turning the sapphic sex comedy into the absolutely wildest teen film ever in recent years.
In an interview with Out, Seligman shared that she loved the idea of two high school students forming a fight club because it shows Josie (played by Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (played by Rachel Sennott) are so horny and selfish that they are willing to go to great lengths just to sleep with other girls.
‘Bottoms’ follows two “ugly, untalented” lesbians, PJ and Josie who are at the “bottom” of the school’s social ladder. In order to be popular, they decided to start a fight club in the hopes that it would get their cheerleader crushes to kiss them.
Seligman said that she was inspired by other teen movies where the leads are treated as “badass heroes” who try to impress the girl along the way. The director added that there is something about naivety and immaturity in high school as a “young baby gay” where they seem to need to “imitate masculinity” to get a girl’s attention which was what the film’s leads ended up doing as they chase after the straight cheerleaders played by Havana Rose Liu and Kaia Gerber.
It is a premise that could be easily perceived as the Predatory Lesbian trope but as a queer woman, Seligman is familiar with it and its effects on queer women. The director remarked that PJ and Josie’s actions are just the same, if not far less predatory than straight male characters in teen sex comedies like ‘American Pie.’
