Movie – When Night Is Falling (1995)

When Night Is Falling is a Canadian film from writer/director Patricia Rozema.  It features a love triangle between a white man, a white woman, and a black woman.  The two women could not be more different.  Camille (Pascale Bussieres) is a respected professor at a conservative Christian college.  Petra (Rachael Crawford) is a bohemian circus performer.  And the triangle isn’t the two fighting over Camille’s fiancé – Martin (Henry Czerny); it’s Petra trying to seduce Camille away.

Movie – The World Unseen (2007)

The World Unseen is a drama set in Cape Town, South Africa in the 1950s.  While the ban on interracial relationships certainly plays a part in this film, that’s not the primary focus.  Instead it is the story of two women, one an unconventional one who runs her own restaurant and another who is a traditional housewife with a husband and three kids.  Neither woman is white or black, though; both belong to the Indian minority that settled in Africa following the troubles in their home region before, during, and after WWII.  Writer/director Shamim Sharif based the film on her own 2001 novel of the same name.  Even though she was born in England, she is of Indian and South African heritage.  While I know little of what South Africa was like in the 1950s this movie felt very authentic to me.  South Africans must have agreed because this film won 11 of the 15 SAFTAs (South African Film and Television Awards) in 2008, including Best Director and Best Ensemble Cast.

Movie – Room in Rome (2010)

Room in Rome is an intriguing story of one night in the lives of two women who have just met.  It is based on the 2005 Chilean film En la cama, but it is really a same-sex version of Before Sunrise (1995), albeit one that is more sensual.  The film received four Goya Award nominations (the “Spanish Oscars”) for Best Actress (Elena Anaya), Best New Actress (Natasha Yarovenko), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song (the wonderful “Loving Strangers”).  I had this film in my Netflix Instant queue for months, but never got around to seeing it.  I figured it was some quickie, softcore film.  When I finally watched it about a month ago I found out that I had been very wrong. 

Movie – Desert Hearts (1985)

Desert Hearts was the first film I ever saw that showed a lesbian relationship as something other than perverse or unhappy.  Instead, it treated the romance with just as much respect as male/female romances in other movies.  Nowadays this might not seem like much, but back in the 1980s it was a huge deal.  The result of this treatment was much praise for the director and actresses, and a moving story for the viewer.

Movie – Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal) (1998)

Show Me Love is a Swedish coming of age film.  It is the story of two very different teenage girls.  It’s also a really sweet story of first love.  The film ended up being the most popular Swedish film of that year.  It was also critically acclaimed, winning four Guldbagge Awards (the “Swedish Oscars”) for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress jointly shared by the two leads.  It won awards from several other countries, too, although it did not receive an Academy Award nomination, perhaps because of controversy over its title.

Movie – Bound (1996)

Back in the 1990s the Wachowski Brothers (now the Wachowskis) had this movie idea about a man trapped in a virtual reality.  While the studio was intrigued by the concept, the film would be expensive and there was no way they were going to give that kind of budget to first-time filmmakers.  To show that they were not amateurs they took a page from the Coen Brothers’ manual and wrote and directed the relatively inexpensive noir/thriller Bound.  The film was critically praised and this enabled them to make the film they really wanted to do – The Matrix (1999).  The thing is, Bound is a great movie in its own right.  I still hope the two revisit this genre at some point.

Movie – Out at the Wedding (2007)

Ever get caught in a lie and then tell a bigger lie to get out of it?  Ever get caught in that one, and tell an even bigger one?  Perhaps not, but the thing with screwball comedies is that they intentionally go over the top setting up comedic situations.  Out at the Wedding is one such comedy.  I laughed quite a bit at this movie.

Movie – Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

The movie Kissing Jessica Stein asks the question, “Can a bi-curious, bohemian, arty woman and a neurotic, uptight, straight woman find love with each other in today’s world?”  The answer may or may not be “yes”, but either way it’s going to be a bumpy ride.  The film is a romantic comedy with some dramatic elements.  It features two appealing performances from the lead actresses, who also co-wrote the film.

Jennifer Westfeldt (Jessica Stein) and Heather Juergensen (Helen Cooper) decided that since they couldn’t get any great roles in other people’s productions they should write their own.  They first did a play titled Lipschtick and this ended up becoming the movie Kissing Jessica Stein.  At the time the film came out the two were celebrated as a female version of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who had famously done the same thing with Good Will Hunting.

Girl Meets Girl Movies

“I support same sex marriage only if both chicks are really hot.” – Bumper sticker

The topic of this category may conjure up images of some sleazy, zero budget film with porn actresses badly overacting to cheesy music.  The fact is, there is just as much variety in this genre of movies as there is in traditional “boy meets girl” films.

There are romantic comedies (Kissing Jessica Stein), regular comedies (It’s in the Water), pretending to be straight comedies (Better Than Chocolate), pretending to be gay comedies (Out at the Wedding), romance (Desert Hearts, Imagine Me & You, High Art), noir/thriller (Bound), young love (Show Me Love), passion (Room in Rome), forbidden love (Loving Annabelle), drama (When Night is Falling), action spoofs (D.E.B.S), biographies (Gia), coming of age (Foxfire, Lost and Delirious), Oscar winning performances (Monster, Boys Don’t Cry), culture clash (I Can’t Think Straight, Nina’s Heavenly Delights), sports movies (Personal Best), farce (The Sex Monster), science fiction (The Baby Formula), costume dramas (Tipping the Velvet), love triangles (Gray Matters), family dramas (Saving Face), finding your way in life (The Gymnast), foreign (Water Lilies), independent (Making Maya), classic “softcore” – tame by today’s standards (1968’s Therese & Isabelle), and period dramas (The World Unseen).

In addition, the stereotype of the kind of man who watches them is some loner who’s very glad the remote control can be operated with one hand.  To come clean about myself…wait, let me rephrase that – to speak honestly about myself, do I sometimes find a sex scene between two women to be a turn on?  Yes.  Of course, I can say the exact same thing about sex scenes between men and women.  Some are good (1992’s The Lover), some are bad (I Heart Huckabees), and most are just there. 

The thing is, the majority of the films I named above have nothing more explicit in them than what could be shown on broadcast TV.  And for those who are thinking, “You can say what you want, but that’s an awful lot of ‘lesbian movies’ you’ve seen Chip” – there are 31 films listed above.  Let’s say I’ve seen another 19 that I don’t remember just to make a total (50) that’s easy to work with.  I’ve seen somewhere north of 5,000 films, so the number of movies with a lesbian storyline that I’ve watched is less than 1% of the total.

Finally, the other attitude I read a lot is that these films are just male fantasies because they have women in them that are too beautiful to be believable as lesbians.  This always makes me laugh.  It reveals so much about the people making these statements.  First, it shows that they assume that lesbians are not supposed to be attractive, perhaps because if they don’t have a man to try to impress then why bother getting all dolled up.  Second, it shows that they are clueless about their own hypocrisy.  Think of any boy meets girl movie you’ve seen (other than Harold and Maude).  I’ll bet the boy and girl were damn good looking.  The fact is, pretty much every person who is in romantic storylines in movies is great looking whether they are male or female, gay or straight.  Third, who says only males want to see beautiful women?  Lesbians aren’t attracted to them, too?

I will review a subset of the films I mentioned above.  I was listing that many just to illustrate the variety of them that exists.  As I post the reviews, I will come back and post the links to them here:

Kissing Jessica Stein
Out at the Wedding
Bound
Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal)
Desert Hearts
Room in Rome

On to the reviews…