imagineNATIVE 26 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! For a film that has its cake and eats it too, step right up for the silent underground short Gateau Girl (P***y, P***y, P***y), directed by performance artist Shanelle St. Hilaire, shot by Rae Swan. A glamorous goddess (Shanelle St. Hilaire), with shiny spider woman eyes, sits before a gleaming jelly cake. Lipstick is smeared before the goddess reaches up and rips open the nylon covering their lips. The cake then gets eaten in the most wonderful way.
“Gateau Girl has no sound, no mercy, and absolutely no interest in behaving.”
Immediately, when Gateau Girl (P***y, P***y, P***y) begins, the most striking and confounding aspect is that there is no sound at all. It is totally eerie, adding a creepy feel to the one-minute short that it may not have had before. Usually, skipping such a fundamental part of production would have been a disqualifier for me, as even the sound of a running projector would have cut through the silent vacuum enveloping the film nicely. Yet I cannot stop watching it, as I keep looping in for another look. Part of it is the peepshow-like title, which draws me like a carnival barker.
The reason the lack of sound in Gateau Girl (P***y, P***y, P***y) works lies in indie cinema history. St. Hilaire brings us back to the primal New York 60s underground, where short films were shot on 8 mm and then shown without sound. The subject matter also matches, as these queer-themed shorts would give impoverished queens a fleeting moment of celluloid grandeur. Swan’s cinematography catches this vibe perfectly, with the thundering colors and textures like you would see in works by Kenneth Anger or the Kuchar brothers. It won’t take long to see Gateau Girl (P***y, P***y, P***y), but it will live in a corner of your head for the rest of your life.
Gateau Girl (P***y, P***y, P***y) screened at the 2026 imagineNATIVE Film Festival.
"…brings us back to the primal New York 60s underground,"
