To paraphrase “Girls Like Girls,” the 2015 track by singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko that has now inspired Girls Like Girls, the debut feature by writer-director Hayley Kiyoko, there’s “nothing new” about the story at its heart. There’s nothing unheard of about the premise, which chronicles the attraction between two teenage girls. There’s nothing radical about the filmmaking, replete with intimate close-ups and awash in summer light. Nothing contained within it is likely to blow a viewer’s mind for its unpredictability, or stun them with its originality.
But teen love being “nothing new” hasn’t stopped every generation of adolescents in human existence from feeling, nevertheless, like they’ve stumbled into something unprecedented. It’s that experience — of discovering something you didn’t know you didn’t know, and finding yourself in the process — which Girls Like Girls captures so fully that it comes to seem, in spite of its familiarity, like a tiny revelation.