[SXSW 2022 Review] 'Sissy' Finds Pathos Underneath Fake Influencer Culture

Sissy begins with a woman speaking directly to the camera positioned incredibly close on her face. “I am loved. I am special. I am enough”, she says to her hidden audience as the camera slowly pans back. She instructs the camera to take a rope and make a circle around them; a safe space you can take with you anywhere you go. And after doing a session of controlled hyperventilation, she offers up the Elon Mask, a face mask you can purchase (with a discount code, natch) to help your face as well as pad the woman’s bank account. The woman is revealed to be Cecilia (Aisha Dee), an influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, who gives self-help advice and meditations while also selling you products you don’t actually need. She posts the video and basks in the warmth of her followers who leave messages and comments about how much she’s helped them, how important she is and how she’s saving lives. 

It’s an intriguing start to Sissy because the movie actually confronts this behavior numerous times throughout. At one point, Cecilia is confronted by someone who’s actually working on getting a PhD in psychology to actually, you know, help people with their mental health. And while the filmmaker’s keep the perspective almost completely in Cecilia’s corner and gives her genuine pathos, it’s clear that, in Sissy, no one is completely innocent. 

In a chance encounter, Cecilia meets her old BFF Emma (Hannah Barlow, also the co-writer/co-director) at a grocery store and the reactions between the two women are telling. Emma immediately wants to catch up while Cecilia wants to flee back to her safety circle. But before you can say “same vagina forever”, Cecilia is invited to Emma and Fran (Lucy Barrett)’s engagement party, along with some either queer or queer-friendly friends. The one person not happy that Cecilia shows up, though, is Alex (Emily De Margheriti). Through flashbacks it’s slowly revealed that Emma and Cecilia had a falling out as kids over Alex and that led to an altercation that left Alex with a physical scar and Cecilia a mental one. 

Immediately, the microaggressions pop up and Sissy does an excellent job of establishing the present’s microaggressions with the past’s aggressions. When the trio were kids, Emma began hanging out with Alex more and Cecilia became known as “Sissy the sissy”, a taunt used to jeer and demean her. In the present, Alex continues to misname Cecilia and belittle her, rousing up the group to join her. They begin to needle her with assessments that she’s profiting off of people’s pain and that she’s using her followers and influencer status to make herself feel better. It’s a vicious encounter made more so by Alex’s continual use of the nickname “Sissy” and questioning how much money she makes. 

The problem is, it’s all true. Cecilia retreats to the bathroom to get a hit of dopamine from her loving followers and their comments. And it’s here that Sissy’s thematic devices becomes interesting. She’s clearly being bullied by this group of mean-spirited “friends” and they continue to provoke and poke and jab her until she either retreats or lashes out. But it also doesn’t let Cecilia off the hook, as a person who craves the attention and adoration of her thousands of followers and uses that dopamine hit in place of actual therapy. 

The microaggressions continue as the group, sans Emma and Fran, have all seemingly sided with Alex in the war of influencers. Then, Alex goes too far and Cecilia hits her with pink quartz. Cecilia’s problems begin to compound and Sissy begins to resemble a slasher, albeit one drenched in candy colors and sunshiney smiles. The production design and cinematography is so bright and colorful, full of still shots as candy-colored as the pride sashes the engagement party wears. 

But underneath that fake exterior, violence bubbles, ready to drench everything in blood red. Once Sissy embraces the slasher subgenre, it begins throwing fantastic moments of gore and violence at the audience while still keeping the tongue-in-cheek satire vicious and razor sharp. Sissy is at its best when it simultaneously skewers influencers while finding moments of pathos in the real life person.