If you’ve ever attended a party where you knew no one, a gathering where you just wandered about from room to room with a plastic cup of cheap vodka in hand, stumbling over ill-positioned feet and abandoned scarves while loud post-punk bands played over cheap loudspeakers, and there’s no place to sit so you finally rolled yourself into a ball, placed your arse on the floor in a corner and remained there for the next few hours, taking in all of the action only to surprisingly discover that you were enjoying yourself, that’s what viewing Daisy Rosato and Nora Kaye’s Sinner Supper Club is like.
Now, just so you’re not taken unawares, Sinner Supper Club is billed as an “improvised gay mumblecore ghost story” shot on a smartphone in less than a week. Some adjectives attached to this lively frolic by my fellow critics include “experimental,” “avant-garde,” “authentic,” and full of rough-around-the-edges charm.”
Besides embracing the basics of mumblecore such as a low budget, indelicate pauses, and routine existential ennui, the film is also a paean to the queer and TGNC community that, when spelled out, equals “transgender and gender nonconforming” community.
This venture quickly begins with thirtyish Sophie (Sophie Sagan-Gutherz), a woman running slightly knock-kneed into the ocean. They’ve just been on the phone complaining about some male companion: “I just don’t like being around him. He’s kind of nerdy. Not cool.” We never meet the pesky gent being described. As for the griping damsel, they apparently drown.
As follows, the party we are attending is part memorial service for Sophie and an eviction celebration for their lover/roommate, Genevieve (Genevieve Simon). [Please note that it’s hard to figure out who’s bedded whom here. Check out 1994’s Go Fish for another unvarnished look at girl-on-girl behavior within closed Sapphic groupings.]
Well, as you’ve already deduced, G’s losing their Brooklyn apartment because without a roommate, the rent’s too steep. The remedy: resettling upstate with their parents, who are saddled with an extra house. Poor G! They’re not only losing their independence and the comfort of their routines, but they’re also going to be losing their emotional support clique. As they know too well, Brooklynites — lesbian, transgender, or otherwise — seldom train outside of the borough unless it’s for a Gay Pride event or a secretarial job in Manhattan.
Anyway, the guests are arriving in a park. There’s the stylish Alice (Elise Kibler) who’s attired in a low-cut, little Chanel-like black number with her newish partner Ash (Ashil Lee), who was uninvited to the festivities and is accordingly greeted with forced smiles. There’s also Nora, who’s brought a Carvel ice-cream cake that is melting and has been bitten by a rat. And don’t forget the moody Jayae (Jayae Riley Jr.), whose feathers seem a bit ruffled.
Because there is an extreme heatwave, everyone heads for G’s apartment that in spots could pass for an Ikea ad. Food quickly becomes a problem. Still, a jar of pickles is discovered, causing the endearing Ash to reminisce: “I used to think pickles were their own thing, but then someone said, ‘No! They were cucumbers,’ And I was like: ‘Oh! My gosh!’”
Post-the-gherkin-chatter, appetizing entanglements are revealed. Who’s in an open relationship? Who’s a mother? Party games are played. Everyone sucks on ice cubes, and I believe it is Alice who mouths to Ash: “This is a group of people that are a part of my life that doesn’t exist anymore, and I don’t feel like I am the person I was when I was with these people, and when I am with them, I don’t know how to be the new version of myself.”
Before we can ponder that self-observation with the attention it deserves, the lights go out, a ghost appears, and everyone will shortly leave G.’s abode, united but separate, and happy yet sad.
The two directors, though, are cheery, especially after receiving huge support at Austin’s SXSW and New York’s NewFest. In an interview for Den of Geek, Kaye gleefully said that they and their cohort embraced mumblecore because “it’s a movement of people who kind of said ‘fuck it’ to the studio system and brought their friends together, shot in the now with a lot of handheld [cameras], using whatever they had to make a movie. We were like, ‘Well, what if we did that, but instead of predominantly cis white men, it was our incredible community of clowns and trans and queer folks?'”
It's up to you now to answer that query after you and your honey view Sinner Supper Club on its release in early 2027. I myself watched it right after my colonoscopy, and I applauded with all of the little strength I had left.