Critics reviews

Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd... is a soft-treading beauty, warm, light and perceptive on fragile questions of feminine sexuality, gender identity and finding your place in your skin.

While the chemistry between Pinnick and Spence is sweet and familial, I couldn’t help but think so much of this film is just…nice. It’s that pretty feather you found in the grass. And maybe you’ll take it home, but will likely forget you did.

While the film includes one of Cone's by-now signature party sequences, Princess Cyd largely eschews these denser crowds of characters, opting for precisely timed shot/reverse shots and leisurely paced two-shots to capture Cyd and Miranda's growing emotional bond. . . . For all the compassionate frankness with which the film details Cyd's emotional coming of age, Princess Cyd handles Miranda's quieter self-transformation in perhaps an even more striking fashion.

If Princess Cyd evokes Rohmer on the whole, from moment to moment it more closely resembles the work of another major French filmmaker, André Téchiné (Hôtel des Amériques, My Favorite Season, Thieves, The Witnesses). Cone's use of music and camera movements add a romantic aura to the story, inviting viewers to savor details of character and setting . . . And like Téchiné, Cone establishes certain mysteries about his characters that he purposely never resolves.

One of the things "Princess Cyd" does really well is gently allow for the space that opens up between people—and in that space everything is okay . . . Perhaps to those more accustomed to the peaks and valleys of plot/conflict/climax, "Princess Cyd" will seem too leisurely. But its leisurely quality—its disinterest in "pumping" things up, its focus on the small yet vivid spaces of listening, understanding, struggle, identity—is its greatest asset.

These plot developments grate largely because of how much of Princess Cyd otherwise gels. Narrative simplicity and low-simmering drama might not always be considered virtues, but here, whenever the plot ever so slightly thickens and the ensemble grows, it's hardly as revelatory as two people chatting in a backyard.

The film is not without fault. It is occasionally pretentious and self-referential, as if the characters know they’re speaking lines from a particularly witty script. It is not wholly immune to the objectification inherent in most female coming-of-age (unnecessary masturbation scene, party of one). Still, “Princess Cyd” is eons ahead of some of its peers, and undoubtedly well-made.

Unlike some glossy, veneered coming-of-age films, Princess Cyd is imperfect. In its latter parts the pacing occasionally falters and there is never quite the expected crescendo to the narrative, which may in part be due to the fact that Cone has stated that he favours mood over action in his films. This becomes part of its appeal. Cone's latest film does not aspire to say huge things, but it is a generous, warm and emotionally intelligent portrayal of female friendship across ages.

When he makes room for true friction, the results are charged... Cone isn’t above schmaltzy montages, but to the writer-director’s credit, he doesn’t tie up every loose end of his hopeful story... Dreamy and earthbound, Princess Cyd is less interested in so-called answers than in its characters’ stumbling grace.

Storm clouds come and go, but in Cone’s film any pain can seemingly be relieved by the simple, generous act of liking someone — not to possess them, but to have your world changed by them. Princess Cyd is a wonderful movie to live in for this reason; it’s full of hope and empathy, as are its two leads.

The performances by Pinnick and Spence are clean, vivid and honestly felt, with a lot of the best work emerging nonverbally in the spaces between characters closing a gap. The movie could use a few more detours or off-plot detail; it risks overdeliberation at times. But these are traits you find in someone's work when you genuinely like the characters, and want more from them.

The film’s refusal to sensationalize can be a tonic... At the same time, though, it’s possible to take this sort of restraint too far. Princess Cyd remains pitched at the same gently understanding level throughout, and the film really could have used at least one or two seismic disturbances, if only to vary the rhythm.