“Maybe I could be in one of your gay love stories one day.”
If you want to fast-track a relationship, just take it on the road. Much like a car can go from zero to sixty on the flat desert roads of Southwestern America, budding romance can also quickly rush from flirtatious and probing to intimate and exhilarating, with passionate declarations of love and the spectre of annihilation coming round the next corner.
In Josalynn Smith’s Us Narrative Competition debut feature Ride or Die (2025) — answering questions such as “What if Thelma and Louise hooked up?” or “What if Drive-Away Dolls (2024) was good?” — an epic drive from Missouri to Hollywood supercharges Paula (Briana Middleton) and Jamie’s (Stella Everett) tenderhearted love story.
So, instead of going on a few coffee dates to see if they are a compatible match, this odd couple quite literally go to battle with the almighty forces of childhood trauma, institutionalised religion, homophobia, racism, sexism, lack of money and the seeming inability to ever move on from the past. It’s an ambitious start for Smith’s career that displays this is a filmmaker who wants it all: big romantic gestures and a real sense of place and texture embedded within politically resonant ideas. It’s hard not to appreciate the bigness of the vision.
Paula is an aspiring filmmaker back home, living with her mother before she saves up to move to Hollywood. While browsing for second-hand clothes, she bumps into her high school friend Jamie, who is working behind the till. During this opening re-meet-cute, Smith displays a great aptitude for the awkwardness and mystery of flirtatious dialogue, aided by Arlene Muller’s warm and inviting close-up cinematography. It’s a small thing, but with just a simple and unflashy combination of word and image, we see the spark between these women being lit in real time.
Back in the basement of Paula’s mother’s house, she says that she wants to make love stories, saying she cries every time watching Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Jamie is immediately intrigued, telling her of the time a man approached her and her mum to take her headshots, before mysteriously disappearing. Here we see idealism and reality clash, a conflict that plays out repeatedly throughout this increasingly menacing and violent tale. For when a difficult home situation forces Jamie to hitch onto Paula’s driveway west, the two women see that the seemingly limitless opportunities of the road are often paved with bad intenders.
As has been well-documented, the road movie is usually male and straight. By depicting an interracial couple (Paula is Black, Jamie is white), Smith keenly shows off the two Americas: one where motel rooms are suddenly full or an interaction with a redneck is fraught with danger, and another where a simple cry or looking cute can suddenly open doors. It joins the far (far!) messier Dreams in Nightmares (Shatara Michelle Ford, 2024) — which focused on a queer Black transgender female road trip — as another much-needed corrective to a genre that is mostly about male existential or economic crisis instead of the perils facing women and/or people or colour. And it is precisely because they are both women, they are lesbians and one of them is Black, that their road trip is quickly filled with all kinds of mortal dangers. Sprinkle a little revenge on top, and this is one story that is bound to get bloody…
Perhaps the peril is a little piled on, and perhaps certain moments feel a little too fantastical — including a stop at the movie theatre of Richard Brody’s dreams and a perfect lesbian bar in the middle of Kansas — but overall, I really enjoyed the ambition of the project as well as the excellent performances by both leads, including debutante Everett, hiding genuine trauma and suffering behind a seemingly goofy exterior.
While Ride or Die lacks the visual panaché or big budget feel of Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024), fans of that unapolegetically queer love story are certain to find a kindred spirit here. Just, if you do feel inspired, make sure you look up sympatico locations before you book that big trip.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.