Riverdale star's Netflix movie Look Both Ways is an insulting 'sliding doors' take on young womanhood
Within minutes of finishing Lili Reinhart's (Riverdale) new Netflix movie Look Both Ways, we clicked on Twitter and the tweet in our feed was the Huck magazine story: "I was denied a life-saving abortion." It's part of a series, and in this one a 28-year-old woman was forced to drive across state lines for an abortion that would save her life, ending what was a non-viable pregnancy.
These stories are more and more common, so seeing it wasn't surprising. But seeing it just after finishing Look Both Ways only served to solidify how remarkably, bafflingly unmoored from reality (despite not taking place in some alternate universe) the movie is.
In Look Both Ways, recent college graduate Nat (Reinhart) is at a crossroads and we see her two potential life stories play out, the 'sliding doors' moment being the result of a pregnancy test. In one timeline she's pregnant, her baby-daddy is her best friend Gabe (Danny Ramirez), an aspiring drummer. In the other, she isn't, and she moves to LA with her best friend Cara (Aisha Dee) to pursue her dreams of working in animation.
The problem – and it is a big one – is that you cannot watch this film without thinking about the fundamental shift in a woman's right to choose. The film is quick to moralise the sex Nat and Gabe have (they did everything right! They used a condom! They're the good kind of people who might accidentally get pregnant, not the reckless people who get pregnant willy nilly!) just in case you were ready to be unsympathetic to Nat.
Reinhart does a formidable job balancing Nat's reticence with the strange impulse she has to keep her child, but the whole film is dogged by, well, reality.
In the timeline in which Nat is pregnant, which we'll call Timeline B, Gabe tells her 'I'm pro your right to choose" a line which caused a visceral reaction on the part of yours truly.
Abortion is never a potential option in stories that revolve around a surprise pregnancy (even Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life doesn't whisper the word 'abortion' for thirtysomething Rory) and while before it was a mild eye-roll of annoyance, now it's changed: the fact is that Nat doesn't have a choice.
The state in which she lives is never named, probably on purpose so as to avoid the political conversation that information would necessitate. Instead, the film focuses on the struggles of young motherhood – all the while supported, if slightly sarcastically, by her wealthy (or at least middle-class) parents.
But what about the women who don't have rich parents and childhood homes to move back into? No, this film doesn't have to show the trials and tribulations of every young mother, just Natalie. Before women's rights and bodily autonomy were gutted, a viewer might have been able to forget about the real world and immerse themselves in the dual narratives of Natalie's possible lives.
Now that's impossible – at least, for this writer – and it's insulting having to watch it play out as if this huge shift hasn't happened, as if autonomy over the bodies of American women haven't been taken away. Surely, SURELY, no matter what sate Nat lives in she's cognisant of this.
Timeline A is no less insulting, though it is less visceral. Somehow, despite being a 22-year-old Gen Z woman, Nat has no idea she has to write a cover letter when she applies for her 'dream job'. She stupidly asks, 'So, what, do you just have to be rich to be an artist?' to which her friend flatly replies 'Yeah. America.'
These are revelations that all millennials and Gen Z-ers know to be true, and it's beyond fathomable that Natalie wouldn't. Yes, she would be frustrated but the naivety with which she approaches these life lessons beggars belief.
And yet, it all works out for her. In both timelines – spoiler alert – she gets what she wants: a successful career in animation, or at least the start of one. In Timeline A she confesses her love for Gabe and in Timeline B she reunites with her dishy new beau Jake; in both she is happy.
It's as if the filmmakers don't want to make a judgement on whether a woman's life is better with or without children. Ignoring the socio-economic details that make Nat's Timeline B life possible, we can imagine a world in which both timelines do make her happy. While unexciting, it's a fair enough ending, given the only person who should make that call is the person bearing the child.
Unfortunately, we know that this isn't the world in which we live, and Look Both Ways' strange blindness to this fact makes it off-puttingly uncanny.
If you've read all this thinking 'I couldn't care less' then fine – but Look Both Ways has nothing else to recommend it: cheesy writing, a total lack of suspense, and no dramatic stakes whatsoever make it not only insulting but also boring. Hopefully someday someone will give Lili Reinhart a role deserving of her talent; her presence, her ease on screen, is one of the only things remotely positive about this film.
Look Both Ways is out now on Netflix
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