So here’s where we are. The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s Lola Tung is starring in Ripe!, a sapphic soccer rom-com set on the Catalonian coast, executive produced by retired USWNT legend Kelley O’Hara, and the internet has – predictably, gloriously – lost the plot.
The teaser dropped on the film’s Instagram (@ripe__xoxo) on 30 April. Lola, sweat-wiping in that universal footballer way, getting bumped by co-star Rita Roca. Eighteen seconds. That’s it. That’s the whole teaser. And the comments section is a sea of “THE SUMMER I TURNED GAY” and we cannot say we blame them.
The short film that started it all
Ripe! isn’t coming out of nowhere. The feature is a follow-up to a 19-minute short of the same name that won Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Festival in 2024. Directed by Tusk – the duo of Kerry Furrh and Olivia Mitchell – it follows Sophie, an American exchange student in rural Spain, who falls into a rivalry-turned-romance with Gloria, a platinum-blonde local footballer played by Rita Roca. There’s a peach. There’s a broken arm. There’s a Call Me By Your Name-coded summer haze. The directors have openly cited the Luca Guadagnino film as a reference point in a previous interview.
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Rita Roca, who plays Gloria, isn’t a trained actor – the directors met her while scouting locations in Catalonia and cast her on the spot. She’s reprising the role for the feature, which is a nice bit of continuity.
Kelley O’Hara’s executive producer era
Kelley O’Hara – two-time World Cup winner, Olympic gold medallist, the woman who broke character at the 2019 World Cup to run into the stands and kiss her now-fiancée Kameryn Stanhouse on live TV – is executive producing alongside Stanhouse. It’s their EP debut as a couple, and honestly, the symmetry of “out footballer produces sapphic football film” is the kind of thing that makes you want to lie down.
She told Autostraddle earlier this year that the 2019 kiss was her happy ending, and that we don’t get to see enough of those. Ripe! is, in her words, her chance to share one with the world. Cool, cool, we’re not crying, you’re crying.
Lola Tung is having a moment, specifically a queer one
If you’ve been on sapphic TikTok at all this year, you’ll have noticed Lola Tung quietly assembling a queer filmography. The Summer I Turned Pretty gave her the launchpad. Then came Forbidden Fruits, the campy horror with Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti and Alexandra Shipp that had the FYP in a chokehold. Now Ripe!. We’re not saying she’s doing this on purpose. We’re just saying the algorithm has noticed.
Kelley O’Hara had been posting clips of Tung training with her on Instagram for weeks, which everyone assumed was just a fun crossover and not, in fact, prep for a feature film. We were not paying attention.
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Ripe! release date
There’s no official release date. No streaming home announced. No full cast list beyond Tung and Roca. Stay tuned on Nonchalant to track updates – we’ll be following this one closely.
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This article was written by one of our creative team writers here at Nonchalant Magazine.
