Vague Visages’ Sweet Talkin’ Guy review contains minor spoilers. Miss Dylan and Spencer Wardwell’s 2024 short features Miss Dylan, Jimmie Fails and Pierce Abernathy. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

If you ever want to experience second-hand embarrassment with a tinge of anxiety, watching people on first dates is just the ticket, as the worst resemble job interviews rather than anything with romantic prospects. In Miss Dylan and Spencer Wardwell’s Sundance-selected short film Sweet Talkin’ Guy, the fear of a creeping inquisition percolates very early in the cringe comedy. Cutting between three interchangeable straight men, the movie vividly captures the many dating faux pas trans women have to put up with from insecure men, whose lack of thought when it comes to gender issues leave them acting like they’re about to commit a social taboo just by going on a date. 

There are harsher realities trans women can face on dates like this, which Sweet Talkin’ Guy avoids in order to skewer the well-meaning but ultimately clueless men who don’t pose a physical threat but will let their stupidity and lack of tact get in the way of a good time. The sibling filmmakers cast their actors from their real-life friends, and once the second-hand embarrassment lifts, the performers’ close bond becomes evident as the well-cast men put a face to anecdotes and horror stories they presumably heard from Miss Dylan, unafraid to linger on the most uncomfortable moments. In a short which runs less than five minutes, where the protagonist is rendered speechless — albeit on the constant verge of awkward laughter — at the brazen lunkheadedness of her male companions, it’s effective shorthand casting.

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It’s a deliberately infuriating viewing experience, even as the directors avoid villainizing their interchangeable romantic cohorts. After all, it’s not a crime to be stupid and insecure of your own masculinity, but it can make dating feel like more of a chore than it should ever be if you have to listen to uninterrupted monologues for a couple of hours. Even with the brevity of Sweet Talkin’ Guy, it appears to have fully realized its statement of intent — there is no possible way to expand upon the dehumanizing nature of dating as a trans person than to sit back and take in the incoherent streams of fragile masculine consciousness that Miss Dylan has been regrettably subjected to. However, she avoids making her character a martyr of the dating pool, ensuring she retains her agency no matter how many men wonder if they’re gay for wanting to sleep with her, or want to keep her a secret from friends in case they get judged for it.

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Every bemused smirk from Miss Dylan acts as a weapon in Sweet Talkin’ Guy, and the fact that she ends up going to bed with each male character isn’t quite the misjudgment it reads as on a surface level. It’s a sign that the protagonist retains a studied control of every situation, figuring out that if every man is going to treat her as a fetish object before they’ve even played their hand, she might as well ensure that she can get something out of the experience. Miss Dylan’s look in the final shot does acknowledge, however, the clear limitations of taking such an approach. The overarching sentiment of the short isn’t one of despair (even as it’s taking aim at a type of seemingly liberal guy whose cluelessness borders on the transphobic) but of catharsis. The writer/star isn’t the only woman who has suffered through bad dates like this, and by letting the male characters’ own words act as the nooses they’ll hang themselves with, it becomes far more resonant on a universal level. If the aim of Sweet Talkin’ Guy was to function as an intervention for single men everywhere, then Miss Dylan and Spencer Wardwell couldn’t have done the job better.

Sweet Talkin’ Guy premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2025.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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