A young trans woman goes on vacation with her caring but overbearing Italian family in Luis De Filippis’ debut feature, executive produced by Julia Fox.

The town in which Renata (Carmen Madonia) and her family vacation in Luis De Filippis’ assured debut, Something You Said Last Night, is sleepy — quiet and inert. The cottages, spaced out enough to give the idea of privacy, sit near a lake that glistens during the day. Boats can be rented and sailed out to the water, there’s a pool somewhere in the resort and a number of places for a person to retreat from the world. 

Considering how sensitively Something You Said Last Night observes its protagonist, it’s a shame her interiority is so opaque. For most of the languidly paced drama, Renata, who goes by Ren, remains a touch too out of reach. The distance, which initially activates genuine curiosity, eventually undermines the narrative De Filippis has so tenderly constructed. 

Ren and her family don’t bicker about her transition — that aspect of her life is accepted, received with warmth and occasionally clumsy care. Their fights are familiar to small families with grown children and aging parents.

Mona complains of her daughters — Ren and Siena (Paige Evans) — not spending enough time with her, a request she rarely makes of her absent son, Anthony. Sometimes she fights with her husband, Guido (Joey Parro), because he doesn’t listen as much as he should. The girls get into it, too: Ren and Siena quarrel in the way sisters often do. Their confrontations are vicious exchanges of harsh sentiments, followed by moments of loving intimacy. 

The central dramas of Something You Said Last Night — Ren trying to tell her mom she got laid off, the sisters navigating summer days at the resort — separate it from the pack of recent films about trans lives by offering a protagonist not explicitly grappling with state violence or family rejection.

Resort life necessitates adjustment in routine. Some of the strongest threads of De Filippis’ film are when we see Ren trying to negotiate her behavior in front of her family and strangers. DP Norm Li’s camera follows her gaze as she watches Siena behave recklessly and fellow vacationers act with a freedom not afforded to her. These moments, which subtly gesture at the complexity of Ren’s internal struggle without sensationalizing it, are occasionally powerful. But they can sometimes feel too muted and cast Ren as a too passive actor in her own life. 

Newcomer Madonia gives us a Ren preoccupied by her thoughts. She communicates that through an impressive range of facial expressions, from the steely stares Ren throws Siena when the younger sister is at her cruelest to the eye rolls reserved for Mona’s self-deifying speeches.

But De Filippis’ screenplay is so spare that it’s hard to appreciate the dynamism of this performance. Ren’s communication is often curt and there aren’t enough scenes in which the eldest daughter reveals her own desires, her thoughts or her life outside of the family vacation. We know Ren is a writer, maybe a journalist, but it’s not clear what draws her to the craft. We wonder what kinds of relationships she’s formed outside of her family? Where does she live, in whom does she confide?