Leave It on the Floor

At first glance, this is nothing more than a slight, upbeat story -- along the lines of the Step Up franchise -- of how pursuing one's artistic dream (music, dance, and drag, in this case) redeems everything. But there is both more—and less—going on in this film. Here, the filmmakers, both white men, set a love story in the midst of the ballroom scene in a poor section of Los Angeles. The mostly black, mostly trans kids of the House of Eminence live to "walk" the runways at competitions and dream of "taking home tens" and trophies. Leave It on the Floor depicts the poverty, homelessness, and marginality of its characters' lives but somehow imagines those conditions as having no impact on their existences; they've been thrown out of their homes and done time in prison; no one has a job. And yet they happily fall in and out of love, treat each other reasonably well, and live in a sort of idyll of sister/brotherhood. It's a Disney fantasy of poor queers of color; on the other hand, it's essentially the only film about poor queers of color. Deconstructing this flight of fancy will provide more insight into class, race, and gender than does the film itself; on the other hand, the characters are at peace with their queer, trans, outcast selves; they build friendships and families and fall in love. There's not much "realness," but there is a kind of pushing back against "realistic" stories of ruined, gritty, miserable black lives, and that's a provocative stance, the film's many weaknesses notwithstanding.