In time-travel comedy My Old Ass, a teenage girl named Elliott (Maisy Stella) does a ton of shrooms and meets the older version of herself (played by Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott has one very specific word of caution for her younger self: do not fall in love with Chad (Percy Hynes White), the cute boy working at her family’s cranberry farm for the summer.
Up until this point, Elliott has only ever been attracted to women, so at first it’s easy for her to dismiss her older self’s warnings. But as she gets to know Chad, she can’t deny the attraction between the two of them. After talking it over with a friend, she realizes that maybe her sexuality isn’t as solid as she realized and that it’s OK that her preconceived notions of herself have been challenged.
One could interpret the movie as Elliott just needing to find the “right man” to show that she’s actually straight. That’s understandable, given decades of stories that play into that lazy and reductive trope. But for director Megan Park, that interpretation flattens the depths of Elliott’s journey. Her story is less about the minutiae of her sexuality and more about adolescent self-discovery, especially as someone previously super self-assured about her place in the world. My Old Ass is a deeper dig into the spectrum of queer identity and how it ties into one’s own self-perception.
“It was really important that the takeaway wasn’t like, oh, OK, here’s a girl who identifies as one thing and now she’s straight,” Park explains to Polygon. “That was never Elliot’s journey and isn’t the story. But I thought it was interesting to have a character that felt really confident in her identity that wasn’t heterosexual, and then all of a sudden started to maybe wonder if she was bi or pansexual. And that was maybe a bit of a weird feeling [for her] because usually it’s the reverse. I just hadn’t seen that.”
It’s a different take on a coming out story. We usually see one flavor in movies and TV: a character assumes they’re heterosexual before they realize they’re attracted to someone of the same gender. But despite how common that particular path is in media, it’s not the only one. Based on Park’s encounters with people who have seen the film, those who discovered their sexuality in a different way, Elliott’s journey is validating.
“Once I started talking to so many people involved in the film and also in the community, they were like, this is something I haven’t seen, that is my journey. And this is never shown. I’ve never seen this before. And it’s so refreshing,” Park recounts. “It is a really truthful experience to so many people. It was just something I hadn’t seen before that felt really authentic.”
