Girls Love Horses

An evening in a suburban household reveals a familial fault line: a woman and her husband argue diffidently in the kitchen, and, tucked away in her bedroom, their teenage daughter and her friend get ready for a school dance. The two pairs revolve around each other, repeating the same words, though they are all stricken with the same inability to connect. Nothing is exactly what it seems in SEVEN SONGS ABOUT THUNDER, whether the discovery of a dead girl’s body, her mother’s curiously mundane voice messages, the pregnancy of a disaffected woman, or a therapist’s uncomfortable revelations about her own sexuality. In GIRLS LOVE HORSES, a car wheel slowly rolls over and crushes a pair of glasses, and the scene’s heavy and deliberate destruction sets the tone for the rest of the film. As a woman travels the perimeter of past violence, she wears a large bandage over her left eye. In a split screen video, a choir director leads a teenage girls’ a capella group in a haunting rendition of “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” by Judas Priest. (Genevieve Yue)