Content Warning: Adult nudity is present in the film. Nothing explicitly sexual, but not discrete.
Not every relationship we have is meant to last. This is a painful realization, whether it occurs as a child, a teen, a young adult, or at an older stage, but it’s a truth. Some people are only meant to be in our lives for a brief period, while others are destined to be with us forever. The length of time one spends with us doesn’t matter as much as the impact they leave behind. This is the central conceit of filmmaker Pavli Serenetsky’s latest project, More Beautiful Perversions, screening in the New Mavericks and Pink Peach sections of Atlanta Film Festival 2025. Taking an experimental approach, Serenetsky, also known as “Brielle Brilliant” or, as mentioned in the credits, “Gabrielle Brillant,” utilizes a time jumbled approach which gives the audience the sense of watching a dream in which interpretation becomes both personal to the central character and the audience through the exploration.
One afternoon, high schooler Aiko (Zahara Jaime) goes for a walk that results in her ending up in the woods, far from the bustling New York cityscape. There, she meets Deedi (Alli Logout), with whom she’s immediately taken, this orange-haired naturalist who whispers to the trees, the insects, and the amphibians that make up the ecosphere. Their time is brief, but impactful in ways that Aiko only begins to understand when it’s over.
Zahara Jaime as Aiko in MORE BEAUTIFUL PERVERSIONS. Photo courtesy of Purpose Repair Shop/ATLFF 2025.
There are three parts that make up Perversions — black and white intercut sequences of nature, Aiko’s telling of the story in the present, and Aiko’s adventure in the past. The first element is the most stylized as Serenetsky presents slow moving close-ups of foliage while various striations and marks appear and disappear from the frame. This design choice gives these moments a lost-and-found feel, very lo-fi and somewhat magical, as though we’ve come upon a reel of film in the woods and respooled it ourselves, discovering its contents. These pop up throughout the film, often used as bookends to moments or transitions to another part of the story. Their use gives the already narrated story a more storybook sensation in the sense that we feel as though we’re observing a story within a story. Not meta in a “look at me” way, but in a structure which creates layers and dimensions beyond Aiko’s simple telling of her journey into the wood. These moments become even more significant to the story as Aiko’s own words transform from disinterest in nature toward a raised awareness and appreciation; therefore, these sequences come to represent the closer look at what Aiko has taken and will continue to take regarding nature’s bounty.
The second part is the telling of the story in the present, a choice by Serenetsky that does more than given the narration meaning. What’s meant by this is that a great deal of films use narration, especially in the beginning of a film, for the purposes of an exposition dump, thereby getting the audience up to speed in a quick manner. Here, however, through the reveal that Aiko is actually talking to someone in their apartment, two things become clear: Aiko makes it back from the forest ok and that what we observe is, therefore, a recollection filtered through perception. With Perversions lacking all the hallmarks of a noir, one isn’t ever really worried for Aiko’s safety, yet, anchoring the story in a present, with Aiko retelling the adventure, Serenetsky not only puts the audience in the seat as though Aiko’s is telling us themselves, it means that we must accept that some of what we see may not be as it happened. This gives permission for Aiko to wax poetic about Deedi while Serenetsky uses a tight close-up on Logout’s face, her orange hair teased out in a beautiful afro which highlights her face in an apparent halo, the deep green of her tank top against her brown skin implying a something extraordinary like a fae — Deedi is quintessentially nature and the most wonderous thing, if Aiko’s memory is to be trusted. Even as the cinematography proves intimate, with tight close-ups on faces as Deedi speaks or on her hands as she shows a different element of nature, we are, ultimately seeing things through the perception of Aiko who is, admittedly, on a bit of a high. Whether that’s from chemical attraction or having actually hooked up with Deedi and therefore being distracted by that memory is up for interpretation of dialogue. What isn’t up for interpretation is the seamless way Logout shifts Deedi from talking about beavers (the animal) to moaning that implies an imagination at play, one brimming with young lust. Given how the film plays out, I tend to lean toward this being Aiko’s imagination, which would serve as another small piece of the total message about exploration and being present within a moment. Sex is great, but have you ever shared a moment with someone you love (separate from whether they love you the same)?
The last piece is Aiko’s actual adventure, shown to us in stops and starts as we’re pulled and pushed through time. Even when we think Aiko has moved past Deedi, the story jumps back to her as Aiko struggles for sleep. Not quite akin to an intrusive thought, but more a memory that pops into our brain without being actively called forth. The reason for the adventure is less important than the adventure itself, which finds Aiko engaging in a space and with people that she wouldn’t ordinarily. Though Perversions isn’t explicitly about the difference between city and rural living, the focus on nature — the names of plants, the processes the ecosystem goes through, and the importance of harmony within nature to maintain itself despite human intervention — infuses the film with a subtext that we, as humans, are lost without cultivating a connection to nature. But this isn’t a “touch grass” message or anything so glib as that; it’s a reminder that being grounded requires being of the world and not just in it. That disconnection from self can be addressed by making connection, whether that means getting lost in the woods or simply remembering that life isn’t anything without people to share it with. This is where the inclusion of Aiko’s friend Mel (Lila Doliner) is so important. Mel acts as a surrogate for us in two directions, both taking the space of someone Aiko is talking to (in narration, it’s to us) and giving us a cypher by which we can connect with Aiko. We become the person that Aiko shares this significant experience with, therefore becoming part of the story of their growth. In essence, connection isn’t limited to where the river runs and frogs play, where people go to get lost and forget (or, melancholily remember), but when we stop and let the noise of modernity fall down and grab hold of what’s before us.
Being far from adolescence, elements of Perversions take this viewer beyond the realm of target audience not just by being cishet, but due to aspects of the LGBTQIA+ community that are foreign due to a lack of lived experience. That said, before getting into the cinematography, the narrative construction, and performance, it can be discussed how Serenetsky provides a clarity and specificity that transcends the specific lens by which this story takes place. Its openness with sex, its curiosity about connection, are universal concepts which generate, within someone outside the target demo of Aiko’s, a tumbling down on one’s own memory lane of a time of self-discovery; of strange, uncomfortably good feelings; and of testing who we are when we meet certain special people. The story, as much a fable with its own version of woodland guides and beyond-reality experiences, speaks the parts of ourselves that remember what it felt like to get lost (literally, in the case of the film, or metaphorically) and totally turned around because of the feelings that someone brought out in you. Regardless of whether you connect with the structural nature of Perversions, the feeling it evokes, the magical sensation of discovery, will resonate.
Screening during Atlanta Film Festival 2025.
For more information, head to the official ATLFF More Beautiful Perversions webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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