The only reason they can afford to vacation on the very expensive Fire Island is because their lesbian mother figure Erin (Margaret Cho) once won a lawsuit after a mishap at a restaurant, allowing her to buy a house there. The men are mostly working-class, and they are all far from financially affluent. The film follows the story of a chosen family of gay men (and one lesbian) who spends one week every year vacationing on Fire Island. The film is an honest, messy, mature, and undeniably funny homage to the good, the bad, and the ugly of contemporary gay life. Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island is the perfect antidote for anyone who is tired of the endless sea of cutesy feel-good coming out stories, agonizingly slow period dramas, and depressing trauma porn that has recently characterized much of queer cinema.
