To love and be loved. To have hope for the future. To be comfortable living an authentic self. To feel seen by family and friends. For many queer folks, that’s the stuff of adulthood, postponed by bigotry and hate. Ben De Backer, a nonbinary teen, feels like they will never know that joy.
Early in I Wish You All the Best, Ben (Corey Fogelmanis) comes out to their parents, not knowing they would wind up on the streets in the middle of the night for doing so. Desperate, Ben calls their estranged older sister Hannah (Alexandra Daddario) to pick them up. She finds Ben spiraling and immediately takes them to her home in Raleigh. It’s there Ben meets their brother-in-law, Thomas (Cole Sprouse), a teacher at North Wake High School. As de facto caregivers, Hannah and Thomas enroll Ben in classes at a place they can let their guard down. “Some people even call it North Woke,” Thomas jokes.
Written and directed by Tommy Dorfman (13 Reasons Why) in her behind-the-camera debut and adapted from Mason Deaver’s YA novel of the same name, I Wish You All the Best delivers a landmark in queer cinema. Finally, a nonbinary character – and the protagonist no less – helms a coming-of-age teen flick. Even more impressive, Dorfman, a trans woman, made a point to showcase queer hope and community rather than zeroing in on the same despair retold time and again in mainstream LGBTQ+ films. When Ben tells their parents they’re nonbinary, for example, she doesn’t show their reaction or the harsh words that follow, which is true of Deaver’s book, too. While this may bear the genre trappings of, say, Love, Simon or Netflix’s Heartstopper, IWYATB takes a raw, fresh approach, one that is both unflinching in its portrayal of queer rejection and lighthearted in showcasing the beauty of self-expression and found families.
Still, the script hits the essential beats of the high school dramedy. There’s the outgoing first friend, Nathan (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), who prods Ben to break out of their shell. Under Nathan’s wing, Ben is introduced to two artsy types, Meleika (Lexi Underwood) and Sophie (Lisa Yamada), cultivating a support system. And in a quintessential queer mentor role, Lena Dunham plays the empathetic art-teacher-slash-therapist who inspires Ben to release their misplaced guilt.
Like the book it’s based on, IWYATB focuses less on any sort of contrived plot and more on the fully realized character at the center. There’s no grand plan to topple the status quo, no scheming to usurp the popular kids nor steps to make it official with a significant other. Instead, the story revolves around the inner life of Ben, embodied so effortlessly by a stunning breakthrough performance from Fogelmanis.
What Dorfman and company achieve here is the laying of a new groundwork for the queer cinematic language. With a soundtrack of legendary trans and nonbinary icons including Sophie and Shamir, a tasteful amount of generational slang – “It’s giving they/them,” Nathan quips – and a gaze that’s both honest and uplifting, IWYATB feels refreshing given the expanding landscape for queer representation. It’s a long time coming, but a nonbinary narrative – which is mindful in not claiming to be the only one – at last gets the teen movie treatment it deserves.
I Wish You All the Best
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This article appears in March 8 • 2024.