My Fiona

My Fiona (2021) was written and directed by Kelly Walker. Within the first 90 seconds of the film, Fiona stops working with Jane, goes to the roof of their office, and commits suicide. That's an amazing way to begin a movie. However, what keeps the plot interesting is the interaction of the people left behind. Jeanette Maus portrays Jane, who has been Fiona's friend and business partner for years. Corbin Reid portrays Gemma, Fiona's wife (and now widow).

Naturally, the two women are devastated. The plot moves forward with Jane and Gemma getting to know each other better, but also--in a way--to spar with each other about who is the more devastated by Fiona's suicide. The movie also includes the women having to battle bias against lesbians and against African-Americans. It's complex, subtle, well acted, and very interesting.

We saw this film virtually from ImageOut, the excellent Rochester LGBT Festival. The movie has a solid 7.3 IMDb rating. I thought that it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

My Fiona is definitely an emotionally sad and beautiful film, and frankly I have not seen such a good quality Lesbian film in a loooooong time. The tone was also compounded with the loss of Jeanette Maus.

The grief of all the characters is well portrayed, complex, sad, interesting. The main relationship that develops doesn't seem fully fleshed out, and the explanation for the suicide is ambiguous (perhaps it was meant to be so). Excellent acting all around, and I was drawn in from the beginning with my interest never flagging.

There are at this point so few reviews that a single "1" score has dropped what would be about a 9 average down to a 5.8, which is definitely not fair or reasonable (numbers don't care, and as Mark Twain said, there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics."). My real rating would be an 8, but to bring the mean up I need to put a 10. I hope more people will do so as well. Just a few more 10s (or enough 9s or 8s) will drown out the outlier rating of 1, and thus cause the mean to represent a "true" reflection of people's opinions about this movie.

(It's very sad that the main character has died IRL. She was terrific in this role and seemed to have a very bright future in movies.)

I watched this on my birthday, and it broke my heart all throughout. I was not expecting it to be so hard hitting emotionally, and it's all in the incredible performances.

By the end I could barely see the screen through my tears. And to add to the hurt, I had no idea that this was Jaenette Maus' last role before she died. Great movie, but I don't know if I can watch it again.

So tough to give any film in this day an age more than a 5 star until My Fiona came into my life. As a stumbled across this on Apple TV I had to see what it was about. As someone who has dealt with friends passing away this movie hit home. The different emotions this movie will take you through is something worth watching and experience. My Fiona thank you for coming to life and helping me.