Sometimes, we all need someone to hold us tight, whether it be at a turning point in our lives, an opportunity for love or a moment of emotional insecurity; Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight is a sublime collection of shorts about those moments when an embrace, kiss or touch is just what we need. NQV’s Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight is now available to rent, buy or stream on Prime Video.
A touch can change everything; a kiss can open up new worlds of possibility, and an embrace can create new realities. Sometimes, we all need someone to hold us tight, whether it be at a turning point in our lives, an opportunity for love or a moment of emotional insecurity; NQV’s Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight is a sublime collection of shorts about those moments when an embrace, kiss or touch is just what we need.
Opening the collection is GRACE AND SOPHIE, directed by Timo Willman, a story about friendship, sexuality and new beginnings. Grace and Sophie have been close friends for years, and both identify as straight. However, after a lively house party, their friendship takes a new turn as they find themselves in bed together. The following day, as the sun streams into the bedroom, the realisation that their friendship has taken a new, unexpected path creates an awkward atmosphere and a degree of uncertainty in what to say. However, as they meet in the downstairs kitchen over a glass of water, one thing quickly becomes clear: sex doesn’t have to change everything, and friendships don’t have to carry fixed, unmovable boundaries as long as honesty, reflection, and agreement sit at the heart of the relationship.
Delightfully sharp, wonderfully observant, and beautifully performed, Timo Willman’s comedy brilliantly explores themes of sexual fluidity, friendship, and casual fun that will resonate with many of us who have found a friendship turn into a casual physical relationship after a few too many drinks.
Conversation and unexpected physical connection also sit at the heart of WOMAN MEETS GIRL, directed by Murry Peeters. Sometimes, the most meaningful discussions come from a random meeting, and for forty-two-year-old Annabelle, it is a meeting with an eighteen-year-old sex worker, Tessie, that will turn her world on its head.
Many people will tell you that by forty-two, we all have our lives worked out, but that’s not true. Life isn’t a straight path with a fixed final destination; it’s a series of winding roads and detours that can lead us to many different destinations. Even in middle age, no matter how confident we may appear, how focused we are, or how secure our home is, occasionally, the very thing we need remains out of our grasp. Sometimes, all it takes is a person from a different side of the tracks to make us realise what we have been missing.
Murry Peeter’s beautifully written and performed tale of awakenings, revelations, and female connection is about those random meetings that open up a whole new world and make us realise that life is about the journey, not the destination.
The third film in Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight is Enrika Panero’s CONCRETE HEART (Coeur béton). Set in the suburbs of Paris, Panero introduces us to Kenza, a shy teenager still attempting to work out her feelings and her sexual desires. Kenza is an outsider in her peer group, where casual homophobia is the norm, and she feels disconnected from the city suburbs she calls home. However, her passion for rap offers a glimmer of hope if she can only find the confidence to express her poetic reality to others.
Kenza signs up for a rap workshop, hoping to find her voice, but is surrounded by young men who often display little respect for women in their lyrics. However, the workshop leader and rapper Oréade isn’t about to let Kenza’s voice be silenced in this tale of art as a vehicle for personal growth and rebirth. Enrika Panero’s short film is based on her experiences attending rap-writing workshops in the heart of a fringe neighbourhood in Paris. As a result, it carries all the heart, emotion, and realism of a film based on lived experience as we watch Kenza grow into a woman who no longer fears peer pressure and labels, and her lyrics finally do the talking.
Our penultimate short is also about the need to escape, find a voice and decide who you want to be. Directed by Tommy Næss, NOORA is a poignant tale of one girl’s quest to escape the oppression and toxicity of a closed, religious community in Norway, where difference is unacceptable. The Christian sect Noora grew up in on the west coast of Norway has shaped her life since childhood, but she knows there is more to explore beyond its strict teachings, including love in the nearby town with a girl named Siv. But when her parents announce that she is to marry the much older preacher Johannes, she knows her options are limited.
Should she accept their plans and stay loyal to her community, or run and never look back? As Noora heads into town to say goodbye to Siv, she knows her life has reached a juncture, but can she find the confidence to follow her heart?
Upon Her Lips: Hold Me Tight closes with the brilliant EXPECTING (L’Attente), directed by Alice Douard. The arrival of a child in the life of any couple or individual is full of joy, fear, apprehension and euphoria. Every couple or individual awaits that arrival with hopes, dreams, and uncertainties, unsure yet excited about the new life about to enter the world. Céline and Jeanne are one such couple, awaiting the arrival of their first child in a maternity ward in the dead of night.
As Jeanne worries about the labour, the space between her contractions and the epidural, Céline holds her tight and offers all the love and support she can while also finding herself wandering the maternity corridors lined with partners awaiting their new arrival. It is this focus that makes Alice Douard’s exceptional short so compelling as Céline meets two expectant fathers with differing perspectives on the arrival of their child; one is full of fear and apprehension as he puffs away on a cigarette outside the hospital, while the other is full of joy at the arrival of his third child. What soon becomes clear is that the emotions, joy, nerves and uncertainties a new child brings for the expectant partner cross gender boundaries as personal identities are reformed and long-held relationship structures take on a new meaning.
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