‘Adam’ Is a Comedy About Gender Identity: WATCH
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The film, from the producers of Transparent, and featuring MJ Rodriguez of Pose FX, is a coming of age film set in 1996, wherein Adam surrounded by his trans and non binary friends, is assumed by the girl that he likes that he’s trans.
He’s so enamored he doesn’t bother to correct her.
“I’ve never dated a trans guy before,” she says.
The look on Adam’s face reveals he knows he’s gotten into something bigger than he anticipated.
Awkward, self-conscious Adam Freeman (Nicholas Alexander) has just finished his junior year of high school in 2006. When his cool older sister Casey (Margaret Qualley, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) suggests he visit her in New York for the Summer, Adam has visions of meeting a girl and finally gaining some actual life experience. The fantasy doesn’t materialize exactly as expected. Casey has enthusiastically embraced life amidst Brooklyn’s young LGBTQ community and invites Adam to tag along with her to queer bars, marriage equality rallies and other happenings. When Adam falls at first sight for Gillian (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a smart, beautiful young woman in this new crowd, she mistakenly assumes he is trans. Flummoxed and enamored, he haplessly goes along with her assumption, resulting in an increasingly complex comedy – and tragedy – of errors he’s ill-equipped to navigate.
Vulture which premiered the trailer Monday said:
It’s the summer before Adam (Nicholas Alexander) goes to college, and instead of moping around his house, he heads to New York City to live with his big sister Casey (Margaret Qualley). “Tell Mom you’re coming to New York to have a cultural experience,” Casey says. Cut to that cultural experience: Adam ingratiates himself in Casey’s LGBTQ-activist milieu, romancing red-haired Gillian (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), who thinks Adam — straight, white, cis — is a trans man, 20 years old, and a student at Berkeley. Adam, based on the 2014 novel by Ariel Schrag, is the feature-film directorial debut of Transparent producer Rhys Ernst. Adam co-stars Leo Sheng, Chloe Levine, and Mj Rodriguez. See the exclusive premiere of the film’s trailer above.
The film, adapted from Ariel Schrag’s 2014 young adult novel of the same name by Schrag herself, doesn’t hit theaters until next month, but it has already encountered criticism online, most of it centering on Adam’s source material. In a widely circulated Tumblr post, poet and YouTuber India Hendrie writes that Schrag’s work is “the most disgustingly transphobic and lesbophobic narrative I’ve ever come across,” arguing that the book implies “that our identities are just costumes for other people to put on.”
Ernst addressed some of the preemptive criticism for his adaptation of Adam in a Medium post published last year. “Believe me, I had concerns,” he writes. He promises readers that he and Schrag have made a number of changes in adapting the novel. “I believe the changes address many of the concerns that have been raised about the novel,” Ernst continues. “My job as the film’s director, after all, was to create a whole new work inspired by, and also in critical dialogue with, the source material. Bottom line, the film had to be its own thing.”
Adam opens in New York City on Aug. 14 and in Los Angeles on Aug. 23
Watch the trailer below.
