If our world existed in a future after transphobia is relegated back to the shadows, then “Regarding Us” (2024) is the kind of movie that would air on television for the family to watch like an Afterschool Special ten to twenty years after the start of a golden age of treating transpeople like human beings to remind people of the bad old days. After news gets out about her gender, middle school teacher Veronica Hathaway (Alexandra Grey) loses her job at New Jersey’s Immaculate Concepcion. (Fun random fact: I went to a Catholic School with that name for a year or so in NYC. Cue Twilight Zone music.) Just when she is about to give up, she meets a family that accidentally help her to hang on. Reality versus expectations is the biggest enemy of this budget indie film since it promotes Veronica as the main character, but the antics of a precocious little girl named Isabel (Andrea Rosa Guzman) and a couple of family melodramas dominate the film.
With a true story inspiring the narrative, “Regarding Us” hits the ground running by introducing its main themes in the opening with Veronica trying to live fully as a practicing Catholic and a member of the LGBTQ+ community as a transwoman. It is a strong thesis that is never centered fully though the gorgeous Grey had the goods to deliver. The story’s flaws appear early when the movie opens with Veronica reading a Bible passage at a funeral. Whose funeral? You will have to wait until the end to find out. Ugh, my least favorite narrative structure-in media res or the “how we got here” trope except here it is not obvious until the rush to tie up loose ends. The dire financial circumstances and persistent theme of exile are established with no pulled punches. Without the support of her biological family., she is looking for a job, preparing to get evicted and shunned at her local parish. Veronica’s situation is realistically bleak.
Isabel is supposed to be cute but is written as annoying. She keeps waking up one of her two fathers, messing with Veronica’s things and sending mixed messages to her friends. Sure she is a kid dealing with big issues such as the possibility of becoming a child of divorce, school bullying, and conflicting parental instructions on how to exist in the world, but if a viewer is not expecting her to be the main character, it is a lot. She gets one line where she is aware that she keeps messing things up, and her actions are retrofitted as positive because of her intentions and the beneficial effect of her actions on others. For example, when it is hard to get a doctor to fill a prescription and too expensive to fill, dumping someone else’s pills in this economy is not cute.
Denny (David Beck, who is also cowriter and codirector) is the first father that gets introduced, and it is easy to see whom Isabel takes after. He is an aspiring actor, and Beck’s acting style is mostly as broad as his character’s ham-fisted style, especially when he is acting with Guzman, but as the movie unfolds, he eases his foot off the gas. When acting opposite Grey, Beck scales back, is more naturalistic and becomes almost as grounded a presence as Veronica. Because “Regarding Us” is still better than our world, despite putting his foot in his mouth, Denny cottons to Veronica and does not mind when Isobel reaches out to her.
Sadly, in the real world, gay men often shun or distance themselves from transpeople to preserve what privilege they possess then use the same equation when it comes to race. Adrian (Eliud Garcia), Denny’s husband and Isobel’s second daddy, is initially an example of that dynamic and is suspicious of Veronica for her transness and spiritual beliefs. As a character, Adrian is challenging to pull of because his off-screen introduction is unflattering, but the narrative’s trajectory is clearly rooting for him. Adrian is supposed to be a doctor, but unlike Denny, his work life is only discussed, not shown. He has understandable grievance with the Catholic Church and does not approve of Veronica’s influence on Isobel. There is genuine chemistry between Beck and Garcia, and perhaps the obstacle in their relationship was too high for Adrian to recover from, but Garcia manages to make it happen, which is impressive.
“Regarding Us” really feels like this family’s story with Veronica ending up as a supporting character in a movie billed as hers. Even though she lives with two old friends, Michaela (Chandi Moore) and Ruthi (Jennifer Bobbi, who wears two more hats as cowriter and codirector), they get relegated to the sidelines and do the house version of Sunday Drag Brunch for Isobel without the mimosas. Veronica exists to serve children, which underscores her calling as a teacher, but people are more than their job, and it feels like cheating to minimize her life outside of her usefulness.
As if there were not enough characters, a second family is introduced. Isobel makes a new friend at school, Kyle (Hudson Paul), who hails from Alabama. She correctly suspects that Kyle is trans, but Kyle’s mom, Constance (Abigail Hawk), and big brother and budding alcoholic, Matt (Jacob Moran), are not as supportive and blame Isobel for Kyle’s gender orientation. Chad, the dad, never appears onscreen, and it is a weird choice because this family moved from Alabama to New Jersey for his job. A betting person would guess that it was because of finances since “Regarding Us” is a low budget indie. It would be nice if the audience could scoff at how awful this family is, but considering everything that is happening in the world, this story is comparatively restrained compared to the reality.
The little relationship between Kyle and Isobel is strong, but their acting style is uneven, which is fine because they are kids. Some child actors are preternaturally strong at an early age, which spoils film critics into having high expectations and little grace. If “Regarding Us” started with Isobel’s scenes and Veronica as her teacher who gets fired, then Isobel could have searched for her and made her dads hire her to be the babysitter, which would reduce a third of what made her annoying. The narrative would have felt less disproportionate and off kilter because Isobel and her dads would be the center of gravity for the story to orbit around. Because Beck and Bobbi did not have a handle on the story structure, the film ends up feeling more like a melodrama, which is fine, but may appeal to a different audience than the one attracted to how the movie promotes itself.
Visually “Regarding Us” is better quality, especially at night, than films and television series with more resources. Talking to you, “Game of Thrones.” Shooting in a city always gives a better advantage to the filmmakers. The editing in a physically tense scene was choppier than necessary but is intended to convey the emotional tone of the scene so still acceptable.
Maybe “Regarding Us” would work better as a television series with the movie as a pilot, but because the narrative never finds its footing and so many characters get the short end of the stick, it feels as if it is better as a first film. The well-intentioned first-time feature filmmakers Beck and Bobbi made a mistake that a lot of rookies make. They act like they will never get a chance to make a film again, so they put all their ideas in the first one. Ironically, their film shares a lot of the same beats and lessons that evangelical, proselytizing films do so they should watch those films and consider how to alter them to fit their future projects.
