Many childhood best friends don’t stay best friends. Once you grow up, you tend to drift apart and only stay in touch through social media or the occasional text. That isn’t the case for Jack and Yaya, two friends who were as close as friends could get as soon as they saw each other over a fence that split their backyards. There is something beautifully simple about Jack & Yaya while the subject is personal and complicated. I adored this film.
Every transgender person’s journey is different—you can’t just lump everyone together. There have been many stories told about how some people have felt alone or not right in their original body, but the connection between Jack and Yaya is so pure and so rooted in each other’s childhoods that they understand and can help one another. There are moments when they quite literally lean on each other, but this is a bond that can never be broken.
Directors Jen Bagley and Mary Hewey interview family members and friends from both families and they reminisce about how Jack (formerly known as Jacqueline) and Yaya (formerly known as Christopher) would play together as kids and how they were immediately considered family. Jack’s father tells the camera, “He’s the son I’ve always wanted and have. He’s a beautiful person.” There is an adorable moment when we see home movies of Jack opening up Christmas presents and he tells his parents that he knows his best friend would also enjoy playing with a Barbie doll head that you can makeover. The home video footage serves not as painful memories but as archival footage of both Jack and Yaya’s journeys.
The film doesn’t shy away from day-to-day issues that these two might face. Jack helps Yaya go through the overly complicated process of legally changing her name on her ID (there really needs to be 18 steps in the state of New Jersey?) since Jack had an easier time doing it while living in Boston. Yaya shares her struggles of needing to wear makeup all the time in order to feel better about herself. Jack & Yaya is a sunny film, but it doesn’t want its audience to think that transgender people don’t still have things to fight for.
Jack & Yaya is lean but its heart is so full. The directors observe this friendship with such ease and appreciation. We would all be so lucky to have friends like these.
Jack & Yaya is available to stream June 18.
