Danielle Solzman
Tito is a film that focuses on a man who is being tormented by sexual predators but is told in a way that gives the film a feminist twist.
Tito (Grace Glowicki) is the reclusive type but mostly because of the trauma he has faced in his lifetime. He wears a whistle in case of emergencies. The fear he lives with has led to walking with a hunch in his back. Moreover, he currently lives inside an abandoned home. This is until the arrival of a friendly neighbor (Ben Petrie). This neighbor is the sex-obsessed type so of course he wants to do nothing more than drag his new friend with him. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t sit well at all.
While Grace Glowicki is an actress portraying a cisgender male, it’s important to note that the character is not transgender. When Tito does speak and it’s not much given the character is mostly silent, there’s a clear feminine voice that’s talking. Glowicki does nothing to hide her being a woman in that regard. Do I think that she could have tried to deepen her voice for the performance? Of course I do. I can see how others might think that she makes a mockery of the transgender identity by being a cisgender woman playing a cisgender male. Because the character is a cisgender male, I didn’t have a problem with it. Now if the character were transgender, I would be up in arms.
Sexual predators are a serious big problem in America. Well, not only in America but also around the world. What Glowicki does with this film is deliver it in a way that subverts the genre so to speak. She uses her film as a way of re-appropriating the fear. In this sense, there’s an important message that Glowicki wants to send when it comes to sexual predators. Granted, she does so in a film that runs just briefly over an hour.
Tito is quite a unique and original film.
DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Grace Glowicki
CAST: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie
