Below Her Mouth

The first time I saw Erika Linder walk onto the screen in Below Her Mouth, I wasn't just watching a character; I was watching a mood shift. She plays Dallas, a roof-worker in Toronto who carries herself with a kind of restless, androgynous gravity that feels like it’s pulling the air out of the room. I happened to watch this movie on a Tuesday night while nursing a lukewarm pamplemousse LaCroix that had been sitting in my cup holder all day, and weirdly, that flat, slightly-too-warm fizz matched the film’s humid, sticky atmosphere perfectly. It’s a movie that smells like sawdust, expensive perfume, and impending bad decisions.

Released in 2017, Below Her Mouth arrived right at the crest of a new wave in queer cinema. We were moving away from the "tragic ending" tropes of the early 2000s and into something more urgent, more focused on the immediacy of the body. Directed by April Mullen, this film famously utilized a completely female crew. While that might sound like a marketing gimmick to some, in the context of contemporary cinema, it was a radical reclamation. You can feel that behind-the-lens shift in every frame. There is no leering here; there is only a shared, intense intimacy that feels remarkably private, as if we’re trespassing on something we weren't meant to see.

The Architecture of an Affair

The plot is deceptively simple—the kind of "lightning strike" romance that usually ends in a heap of metaphorical ashes. Natalie Krill plays Jasmine, a fashion editor who seemingly has her life in a neat, symmetrical row. She’s engaged to Rile (Sebastian Pigott), her apartment is pristine, and her future is a pre-written script. Then she meets Dallas.

What follows isn’t a slow burn; it’s a flashover. The two spend a weekend together while Jasmine's fiancé is out of town, and the film leans heavily into the physical. If you’re looking for a dense, Aaron Sorkin-style screenplay with rapid-fire dialogue and subplots about Canadian tax law, you are in the wrong neighborhood. The plot has the structural integrity of a wet paper towel, but you’re not here for the architecture; you’re here for the fire. The film prioritizes sensation over story, and in a 92-minute runtime, it actually manages to make that choice feel like a strength rather than a shortcut.

The Gaze and the Grind

I think what fascinates me most about this film, looking back from the vantage point of 2024, is how it handles the "female gaze" without making a polite speech about it. Maya Bankovic’s cinematography is tactile. You feel the grit of the roof where Dallas works and the cool linen of Jasmine’s sheets. In an era where many streaming-service romances feel like they were shot in a brightly lit IKEA, Below Her Mouth has a moody, cinematic texture that feels grounded in reality.

It’s also a fascinating showcase for Erika Linder. A high-fashion model making her acting debut, Linder doesn't have a lot of lines, but she doesn't need them. She communicates in leans, stares, and the way she handles a cigarette. Opposite her, Natalie Krill does the heavy lifting emotionally, portraying a woman whose entire world-view is being dismantled by a person she just met. Their chemistry is the engine of the film; without it, the whole thing would have stalled out in the first twenty minutes.

A Festival Life and a Digital Legacy

Despite the buzz it generated at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie was something of a ghost at the box office, pulling in just over $33,000. It’s a classic example of the "festival-to-streaming" pipeline. It didn't need a massive theatrical run to find its people; it found them on late-night Netflix deep-dives and queer cinema forums. It’s one of those films that exists almost entirely in the digital ether now, a "hidden gem" that people pass around like a secret.

Interestingly, the production was a sprint, shot in just three and a half weeks. That frantic pace shows up on screen—there’s a restlessness to the editing and a lack of polish that makes the affair feel authentically impulsive. It’s a contemporary drama that doesn't care about being "important" or "politicized"; it just wants to show you what it feels like to be completely consumed by someone else for 72 hours.

If you’re in the mood for a film that values atmosphere over exposition, Below Her Mouth is a trip worth taking. It captures a very specific moment in the late 2010s where queer stories started demanding space to be messy, erotic, and unapologetic. It’s not a masterpiece of storytelling, but as a sensory experience, it’s remarkably effective. Just make sure your LaCroix is actually cold before you hit play.