Queer communities in cities around the world are under increasing threat from rapidly rising rents and landlords more often favoring corporate big business tenants over small owner-managed businesses. In Erica’s First Holy Shit, we see how this is affecting bohemian Austin, Texas. The city’s famous queer fitness guru, Erica Nix, contemplates the changing tides of Austin’s value system and the plight of bohemian artists like herself being priced out of the city. She embarks on a humorous, erotic and hallucinatory fever dream, seeking advice from the likes of her inner child, God, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mother Nature, and Satan, on how to deal with the situation.
Nix takes us on a slightly camp, John Waters-esque journey of self-indulgent, self-discovery as she attempts to figure out her role in Austin’s ever-changing landscape. The film is a comedic psychosexual lesbian fantasia of adventure and discovery. Her psychedelic opus is a tribute to old Austin, an homage to keeping things weird in a changing landscape that is no longer artist-friendly, and a salute to trying desperately to do the right thing but never getting it quite right. Something many of us can relate to. In a bizarre instance of life imitating art, the film depicts Erica running for mayor of Austin, which in turn has resulted in Erica actually running for mayor of Austin.
With a cast of many fellow Austin queerdos and weirdos, including cult performance artist Christeene, who plays an excellent Mother Nature, the film is a psychedelic mash-up of genres and formats ranging from confessional monologues, outré humor, game show segments, explorations in self-help, and mind-bending visual freak outs. Very funny scenes include Erika being sucked up Mother Nature’s asshole in order to have a consultation with Satan (Andie Flores), who lives up there. Other cast members come from Austin’s most acclaimed underground performers, artists, and musicians, including p1nkstar (Girls Like Us), Caleb De Casper, Nikki DaVaughn and Lynn Metcalf.
Camp, colorful and sexy, Nix’s film uses humor to explore a serious issue – the only solution of course being that if we want to effect change in our communities, then we need to lean in and get involved; that, in Nix’s case, means running for office. Erika advocates a trickle-up economy rather than a trickle-down economy, with the trickling-up coming from the aforementioned queerdos and weirdos. Erika gets our vote. Good luck to her.
P.S. Ris Fatah reviewed this movie at PRISM 35: aGLIFF’s 35th Annual LGBTQ+ Film Festival
Review: Ris Fatah Queerguru’s Contributing Editor Ris Fatah is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant (when he can be bothered) who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
Labels: 2022, Austin, Erica's First Holy Shit, lesbian comedy, Prism Film Fest, review, Ris Fatah
