Plan B (2021)

Written by River, one of our film writers, and edited by Udita, one of our editors!

I went into Plan B (2021) is fairly unassuming. Two teen girls, Sunny and Guadalupe, who goes by Lupe with her friends, set out in South Dakota to obtain a Plan B pill after “a regrettable first sexual encounter” and of course, there are shenanigans along the way. What would a buddy, coming-of-age story be without shenanigans?

There are layers of abstinence-only sexual education, Christianity’s standards on the unmarried, and perceived family expectations that physically hurt me as a watcher because it felt like my own childhood in many ways. The first 10 minutes do a wonderful job setting up the family expectations by showing Sunny and Lupe with their respective families and the familial expectations, then transition to the girls meeting up on the way to school. I loved the visceral combination of awkwardness and shame in the first three school scenes. The gym locker room and gym class were rife with social hierarchy in my liberal high school and the movie does well to set up social expectations between students in just a few minutes. We cut to a video that is supposed to be a sexual education video comparing women who have had sex before marriage to a run-down, used car and the teacher struggles to adequately answer the teens’ legitimate critiques of abstinence-only education. This layer of misinformation and shame will permeate the rest of the movie.

After the classic plan of throwing a party because Sunny’s mother is out of town for the weekend, and Sunny’s mishap of sex for the first time, things really get started. They do the logical step of going to the local pharmacy to get the Plan B. It’s definitely awkward but turns south very quickly when the pharmacist refuses to sell Sunny and Lupe the pill due to the Conscience Clause when he finds out they’re 17-year-olds.

After some panic, they decide to drive three hours away to get Plan B from the closest Planned Parenthood. There are a lot of hiccups along the way and several heartwarming ones as well. Lupe is not straight and has not come out to Sunny, let alone her family or anyone in town. Sunny finds out because the car gets stolen and they share a very real moment driving down the highway. Lupe talks about her shame and fear and Sunny is understanding and supportive of Lupe in a way I can’t recall seeing on screen. They then share a similar bonding moment when Sunny details her first time having sex. I can’t overstate how much of a wonderful, emotional moment that was in the film before we start to roll into even more.

Sunny and Lupe eventually make it to Planned Parenthood full of the excitement and promise of being able to finally get Plan B and feel better about everything only to find the doors locked and the lights off. There is a sign stating that the location is permanently closed followed by shots of the recently occupied but now empty offices. I was absolutely gutted and had to pause the movie to collect myself. Sunny breaks down in the parking lot and Lupe pretends to be confident in her support of Sunny. The two girls are understandably torn as the film spends multiple minutes focusing on Sunny and Lupe in the Planned Parenthood parking lot, crying and holding each other. They both head home to face their families after being gone for a significant chunk of the weekend.

With only 12 minutes left, I couldn’t help but wonder how there would be an ending befitting of the powerful emotions we had been seeing throughout the second act. Lupe has what is probably the most heartwarming and affirming conversation she has ever had with her father and is left in happy tears. Sunny’s mother initially confronts Sunny for violating her expectations and Sunny is distraught. Her mother realizes that she made a mistake and they have a heart-to-heart. I must admit, I did not expect Sunny’s mother to be so affirming that she goes and buys Plan B for Sunny. Both parent interactions beautifully subvert the expectations previously established for each of their parents.

I did not expect a teen-driven movie to be so emotionally hard-hitting but I am so happy that it did. The heavy emotion scenes weren’t long scenes either but they used every aspect of the medium to fill out the stories. So, if you would like to watch a coming of age buddy movie with positive queer representation, I highly suggest Plan B which is streaming on Hulu.

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This piece was written by one of our film writers, River.

This piece was edited by one of our editors, Udita. Reach them at @wilde_woolf on Instagram.

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