Princess Cyd

So many movies are all sizzle and no steak; it's kind of refreshing, in a way, to be frustrated by all steak and no sizzle.

Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd is a soft-treading beauty, warm, light and perceptive on fragile questions of feminine sexuality, gender identity and finding your place in your skin.

Princess Cyd is quiet almost to the point of stillness and deeply generous. It believes women will heal each other and their communities. It hopes.

As comfortable to slip into as an afternoon in the sun, as satisfying as a late-night piece of cake, Princess Cyd is a jewel of a film that plumbs thematic depths far below its surface.

Sometimes the calm between these two women is realistic. But the director often cops out the second his characters get into messier emotions.

Its leisurely quality-its disinterest in "pumping" things up, its focus on the small yet vivid spaces of listening, understanding, struggle, identity-is its greatest asset.

...if conflict is what you want to avoid, I admire that, and Jessie Pinnick makes it real when it counts...

A sensitive indie that still induces laughs, Princess Cyd is an underrated gem well worth your time.

Episode Three: The Princesses, The Captain, The Fixer, & The Guns

Cyd's summer is more about exploration than catching up on the latest bestsellers. The film examines Cyd's sexual fluidity with the greatest of ease and her conversations with her aunt are revelatory for a movie starring women.