Jess X. Snow | Safe Among Stars / 2019

removing the body

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jess X. Snow and Kit Yan (screenplay), Jess X. Snow (director) Safe Among Stars / 2019 [9 minutes]

 

As a young student at the local university, Jia (Poppy Liu) is rapped by her best male friend, and as she attempts to deal with the assault, without telling her mother (Lean Cai) the reason, returns home.

     She has since become involved with a lesbian, Sonnia (Vera Lam), but even so finds it difficult to love, to be touched, as each time she feels metaphorically as she has been teleported from her body to join the stars. It is a self-protective act she has learned of removing her body from the world in order not to be violated.

     Even with her mother, she finds herself protectively escaping into space, but at the same time desiring to return to life and normality. Finally, she wills herself to return to the beauty of the world around her, allowing Sonia to actually touch her and make love, and even gently returning to her confused and somewhat angry mother. During the preparation of one meal, she takes over the dishwashing activities of her moment, and finally speaks out, ready to tell her mother why she has left school and what the problem has been.

     With that admission, one suspects, she will explain why she will never have the boyfriend her mother keeps longing for, and perhaps even introduce her mother to her lesbian friend.

   This is a simple and rather poetic film expressing the displacement of the body many feel after its violation, and how someone like her can come back to the enjoyment to the sensual and physical world around them.

     If it’s certainly not a profound film, it does simply and gracefully deal with the issues of rape and the effects it sometimes has upon its victims.

 

Los Angeles, September 12, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).