Slanted

An insecure Chinese-American teenager submits to experimental surgery to appear white, chasing a prom queen crown and the acceptance she believes comes bundled with it. The satire announces itself in the tagline, if you can't beat them, be them, and the premise commits fully to its own outrageousness, borrowing the logic of body horror to say something blunt about assimilation and the price of belonging.

This suits viewers who like high-concept social satire with teeth, the sort that gets a laugh and then makes you examine it. Expect a high school rendered as a pressure cooker, a tone that swings between comedy and genuine discomfort, and a pace that keeps its hour and forty-four moving. Anyone drawn to genre filmmaking about identity, or who likes a coming-of-age story with a queasy edge running underneath, will find it provocative company. Put it on when you want something that starts an argument afterwards.