Lili Reinhart leads parallel lives in the trailer for Look Both Ways.
The Netflix film sees Lili's character Natalie take two very different life paths. There's the Natalie who accidentally gets pregnant after having sex with her friend (Danny Ramirez) and moves home to Austin, Tex. to raise her baby. It's not the life Natalie imagined for herself, but it's not bad either.
On the flip side, there's the Natalie who moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream career, having made it through a pregnancy scare. It's exciting and just what she wanted, but it also has its downsides.
"Everybody has that moment in their life," Natalie's boss, played by Nia Long, tells her in the trailer, "where they have to decide what's most important to them."
And though it's hard to accept, Natalie learns, "It's not just one moment that defines your life, it's all the moments."
Director Wanuri Kahiu wanted to highlight the different but equally satisfying paths women take in their lives. "On both sides, it is about women striving for excellence and that is what drew me to it," she told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in August 2021. "Either through motherhood or artistry, it is about women striving for excellence. That is the most important thing and that is the big takeaway and why I wanted to be part of the project."
Wanuri noted that while filming the movie, she realized there isn't as much support for mothers in the workplace, saying, "The number of women who have been forced out of the industry because they are mothers and because they could not keep up the challenges of both work and being a mother is devastating."
So Wanuri hopes to uplift those who want to do it all with Look Both Ways, which she described as "an incredible story about women's resilience."
Look Both Ways premieres Aug. 17 on Netflix.