Tag: Lesbians in Film

LGBTQI Week: "I’m Not Running, I’m Choosing": ‘Pariah’ and Gender Performance

Warning: spoilers ahead!!
“Who do you become if you can’t be yourself?” Pariah, my absolute favorite film of 2011, tackles that question. 
Written and directed by Dee Rees and produced by Nekisa Cooper, the powerful Pariah tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye in an astounding performance), a 17-year-old black lesbian in Brooklyn. Studious, artistic and sensitive, Alike is a writer who knows who she is but hides her sexuality from her family. We so rarely see positive portrayals of black women and queer women on-screen. Here, we have the privilege to see both. With subtlety and grace, it’s an exquisite and achingly beautiful female-centric coming-of-age film about a young woman discovering her sexuality and asserting her identity. 
Carrie Nelson already wrote an articulate and intelligent review of the award-winning film. You should seriously go read it! But I want to touch on a few points that particularly struck me while watching, particularly about gender performance and identity. 
Most films don’t address teenage sexuality. Sure they may objectify women or poke fun at raging hormones. But they don’t often explore how teens’ discover their sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, people of color’s sexuality, or queer sexuality.
Throughout the film, we receive visual cues to Alike’s gender performance. When we first see Alike in a club, she’s wearing a loose men’s jersey, baggy jeans and a baseball cap. She’s emulating her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker). On the bus home, Alike removes her hat and shirt, revealing a form-fitting top. She puts on earrings. All for her overprotective, lonely and overbearing mother Audrey (Kim Wayans). When she’s around her mom, Alike wears stereotypically feminine clothing. Flouncy skirts, dresses, snug blouses – all clothing that “shows off her figure” like her mother wants. Her mother buys her these clothes, knowing full well that Alike abhors wearing them. Yet refusing to accept her daughter, she tries to orchestrate her daughter’s identity.
Alike’s mother can’t handle the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. Audrey shows a colleague at lunch a fuchsia sweater she bought for Alike. She tells Arthur (Charles Parnell), Alike’s father, that she’s “tired of this tomboy thing she’s doing.” Yet Alike tries to express herself, telling her parents that the sweater “isn’t me.” Alike’s identity contradicts her vision of her daughter that she imposed on Alike. Alike’s father is more protective of her as she’s a “daddy’s girl.” Yet he refuses to admit or see the signs that Alike might be a lesbian. Between the two is Alike’s sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) who knows about her sexuality and loves her regardless. 
Whenever Alike leaves home, she transforms herself into the identity she chooses. At school, we see her rush to the girls’ bathroom to change. She adopts a more masculine appearance to coincide with her gender non-conformity. Laura buys Alike a strap-on to have sex with a woman. But Alike’s uncomfortable wearing it (it’s white, it pinches her) and ends up throwing it away. 
For Alike, both sets of clothing – the hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine – are a costume. She rebels from the princess wardrobe her mother wants for her by going to the other extreme, exploring if it’s who she is. But neither appearance encapsulates Alike. Both the butch and the femme identities are disconnected from her personality. 
“Alike’s a woman who knows she loves women, and is sure in that, but her struggle is how to be. Her struggle is a more nuanced struggle of gender identity within the queer community. She’s not the same person that (her friend) Laura is, neither is she this pink princess that her mother wants her to be. She falls somewhere in between. Finding the courage to carve out that space is her journey.” 
Audrey suspects her daughter is a lesbian or at the very least is attracted to women. But she tries to derail Alike’s sexuality. Audrey forces Alike and the charismatic Bina (Aasha Davis), the daughter of a work colleague and one of Alike’s classmates, to spend time together in a vain attempt to separate Alike from hanging out with Laura, who’s own mother has disowned her for being a lesbian. Alike tells her mother that nothing is going to change, Audrey replies, “God doesn’t make mistakes,” as if homosexuality is a mistake. But Audrey’s plan backfires as Alike and Bina bond over music and share a growing attraction to one another. 
Drawn to one another, Alike and Bina have sex. Despite their shared intimacy, Bina rejects Alike. Breaking Alike’s heart and devastating her, Bina tells her she’s not “gay-gay” and asks her to keep their encounter secret. We see that Bina possesses sexual fluidity yet is afraid to commit to a woman, perhaps due to society’s heteronormative standards. Or maybe she doesn’t want to commit to anyone, male or female. Or maybe she’s an insensitive asshole. 
Whatever Bina’s motivations, Alike’s heartbreak ushers in her refusal to bury her identity any longer. Amidst a huge fight between her parents, Audrey angrily tells Arthur, “Your daughter is turning into a damn man right before your eyes.” Alike tells her parents she’s a lesbian, which enrages her mother. Audrey hits her repeatedly, her father trying to restrain her, after Alike finally confirms what her mother already knew. 
Alike turns to Laura (who tries again to reach out to her mother after she earns her GED) for solace and support. Both women are able to commiserate as friends and as lesbians rejected by their mothers’ gendered expectations. 
By the end of the film, we see Alike’s clothing change again. Adopting some of Bina’s style fused with her own – perhaps to convey that she’s learned from her heartache or it may be her acknowledgement of her sexual transformation – she wears scarves and earrings with jeans. No longer shadowing Laura and no longer conforming to her mother’s gendered expectations, Alike rejects the gender binary of butch and femme, a symbolic balance of her identity, a unison of femininity and masculinity. 
Alike divulges her feelings through spoken word. Her poem at the end of Pariah is hauntingly stunning (making me weep uncontrollably), echoing her painful yet ultimately freeing journey towards self-acceptance: 
“Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free.” 
Pariah shattered my heart with its aching beauty, uplifting my soul. We are allowed a window to witness her journey and self-discovery. Through her wardrobe and poetry, Alike eventually expresses herself as a lesbian in the way that she wishes. Alike insists she’s not running, she’s choosing. While she means this literally, there’s  meaning beneath the surface. No longer running from who she is, Alike chooses to embrace her identity. Watching Alike discover and assert herself is beauty, poetry in motion.

LGBTQI Week: ‘Fire’: Part One of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements Trilogy’

This review by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 21, 2011.

Fire (1996)
Fire is the first film in Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy (Earth and Water follow). Made in 1996, it focuses on a middle-class family in present-day (funny how I still think of the 1990s as “present day,” despite the global changes of the past fifteen years) India.

The film centers around two married couples–Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his wife Radha (Shabana Azmi), and Ashok’s brother Jatin (Javed Jaffrey) and his wife Sita (Nandita Das)–who run a carryout restaurant and video store, and who share a home with the brothers’ mother, Biji (Kushal Rekhi), and their employee, Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry). Jatin and Sita are newlyweds, but we quickly learn that Jatin loves another woman (Julie, a Chinese-Indian woman who has perfected an American accent and dreams of returning to Hong Kong), and married a “traditional Indian woman” out of pressure from his brother and mother.
The film offers the womens’ perspectives on the conflicts between desire and duty, and between tradition and the realities of a modern India.

As with almost any film centering on family drama and dynamics, we see the tensions simmering beneath the surface as the film focuses on the two women and their lack of fulfillment from their marriages. Mehta, in the DVD’s Director’s Notes for Fire, states,
I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.

More than 350 million Indians belong to the burgeoning middle-class and lead lives not unlike the Kapur family in Fire. They might not experience exactly the same angst or choices as these particular characters, but the confusions they share are very similar–the ambiguity surrounding sexuality and its manifestation and the incredible weight of figures (especially female ones) from ancient scriptures which define Indian women as pious, dutiful, self-sacrificing, while Indian popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood”, portrays women as sex objects (Mundu’s fantasy).

To capture all this on celluloid was, to a large part, the reason I wanted to do Fire. Even though Fire is very particular in its time and space and setting, I wanted its emotional content to be universal.
Sita learns very early in her marriage that her husband is in love with Julie–he doesn’t hide the relationship from her–and she seeks solace and comfort from Radha. Radha hasn’t been intimate with her husband in 13 years; when Ashok learned she was unable to conceive, he sublimated his desires (and began channeling a good bit of their income) into religious study with his swami. The friendship between Sita and Radha soon evolves into a sexual relationship, and when the women are found out by their family, they must decide whether to obey tradition or follow their hearts.

Radha and Sita
The film explores what traditional marriage has done to alienate these women–particularly Radha–from their own desires. The desire for intimacy and sex, sure, but also the desire to live their lives for themselves, rather than for their husbands. My reading of the film is certainly from a Western perspective, however, and you could argue that the film is about discovering desire (rather than reconnecting to it after a period of alienation), since the traditional, conservative Hindu/Indian culture didn’t allow much–if any–space for individual desire for women. Sita embodies changes in the society, as she comes from a traditional family, but is more critical of the traditional rituals and more in touch with her body and her desires. (When we first meet her, for example, she playfully tries on her new husband’s pants and dances around their bedroom, unashamed of her body.) Sita is also the one who initiates a physical relationship with Radha.

Depicting a lesbian relationship on film fifteen years ago proved hugely controversial, and Fire was immediately banned in Pakistan, and soon after pulled from Indian cinemas for religious insensitivity. Although the film twice passed the Indian censor board–they requested no editing, and no scenes removed–violent protests caused movie houses to stop showing the film. In “Burning Love,” Gary Morris writes,
The reaction of some male members of the audience was so violent that the police had to be called. “I’m going to shoot you, madam!” was one response. According to Mehta, the men who objected couldn’t articulate the word “lesbian” — “this is not in our Indian culture!” was as much as they could bring themselves to say. 

It isn’t only the tangible pleasures of a lesbian relationship that created such heated reactions, though that’s certainly the most obvious reason. This beautifully shot, well-acted film is a powerful, sometimes hypnotic critique of the rigid norms of a patriarchal, post-colonial society that keeps both sexes down.

The controversy surrounding the film may have superseded the film itself–which is beautifully shot, heartbreaking, and even darkly comedic at times. Fire contains so many elements that I love in film: strong female characters, an exploration of complex issues that is never oversimplified and that never leads to individuals being labeled good or evil (although they certainly behave in good and/or evil ways), and immersion into a culture that isn’t entirely familiar to me. Speaking to a Western audience, Mehta has stated that one of her goals in filmmaking is to “demystify India,” its culture and its traditions. Fire complicates our understanding of a traditional patriarchal culture, and throws into sharp relief the ways these traditions impact women in particular.

Again, here’s Mehta on Fire:

We women, especially Indian women, constantly have to go through a metaphorical test of purity in order to be validated as human beings, not unlike Sita’s trial by fire.

I’ve seen most of the women in my family go through this, in one form or another. Do we, as women, have choices? And, if we make choices, what is the price we pay for them?

***

There is a ton of information online about Fire. Here are some selected articles for further reading:

———-

Amber Leab is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.


LGBTQI Week: Stranger in a Queer Land: How ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ and Susan Sontag Defined My Trembling Identity

This is a guest review by Eva Phillips.

It might come off as a bit absurd, even an effrontery to some, to suggest that a film in which RuPaul must resist the titillation of a faux-fellatio on a pitchfork and bigotry is gleefully bellowed in the hate mantra “Silly faggots, dicks are for chicks!” is the very film responsible for one of my most pivotal coming-of-age realizations. But rarely do we get to choose the moments or media that have the greatest impact upon us. And such was the case with But I’m A Cheerleader.

What was most profound and even revitalizing for me the first time I watched—quite literally hunkered in my basement as if I was viewing a contraband edition of Cannibal Holocaust (for which I would provide a link, but I think the title alone is umbrage enough to the nature of its content)—But I’m A Cheerleader was not that it featured a panoply of beautiful shots or striking cinematography, nor that it was steeped in witty yet complex banter. Before it seems like I’m vilipending the film, I certainly don’t want to underplay it’s merit—it’s terribly amusing, sneakily provocative, peculiarly heartwarming, and, OH, YEAH, IT HAS RUPAUL AND CATHY MORIARITY IN THE SAME DAMN CAST. However, the film instantly became my most cherished nugget of queer cinema for reasons that pertained to the movie’s machinations in my life outside the film, and it’s hand in my self-construction of a queer identity. But more on that shortly. The film’s diegesis is certainly worth exploring and even worth praising. Jamie Babbit–who would later go on to direct such Sapphically scintillating films as Itty Bitty Titty Committee (a film which also appealed to my naughty nursery rhyme sensibilities, though I was disappointed it was not some salacious re-envisioning of a Dr. Seuss universe)—emerged from her short film cocoon to direct, and conceive of the story for, Cheerleader, her first feature length released in September of 1999. And, my, what an ostentatiously-hued emergence it was. Centering around the foibles and frustrations of an ostensibly “normal” (or, heteronormal, as the film exploits) high school cheerleader Megan, the narrative rests on the peculiar, raspy-throated charm of Natasha Lyonne.

Let’s pause for a moment to give due reverence to Miss Lyonne. Yes, she’s had her fair share of indecencies aired as fodder for the public eye in the years since Cheerleader and American Pie. But if ever there was an underappreciated icon for blossoming queer sexuality, it’s Lyonne, at least for my money. She’s got the vibe of that moderately unbalanced, untraditionally gorgeous upstairs neighbor who knows every Dario Argento film that you encounter when you first arrive to Chicago, downtrodden but full of potential, who fearlessly flirts with you and subtly teaches you how to be audacious and open in your amorous and creative passions. (Sometimes I go on run-on tangents when I imagine my future….). She made the gravely-voiced-teen rad long before Miley Cyrus and her “I’ve-been-chain-smoking-for-30-years-even-though-I’m-17” droning. And she has a Rufus Wainwright song penned in her honor. Come on. Give the girl a shot.

But I digress. Megan, who lives in an ultra-saturated world—filmed brilliantly with an idyllic tint that gives the perfect every-town suburbia a feel of being all too artificially ideal—begins to show the terrible, if not purposefully clichéd, symptoms of Lesbianitis. She ogles her fellow coquettish cheer-mongers, she loathes the kiss of her quintessentially-90s-studly beau (although, his frenching finesse leaves a lot to be desired), her locker is adorned with images of other gals, and, if those weren’t sufficient red flags, she’s a Melissa Etheridge enthusiast (Yes. It’s perfectly acceptable to grimace. Subtlety is not a bosom buddy to Babbit or screenwriter Brian Wayne Peterson. But that’s sort of why I love it.). After being confronted by her disconcerted parents (cast as the drabbest Norman Rockwell caricatures imaginable) and haughty, disgusted friends (wait a minute, is that Michelle Williams??? Could this movie be any more deliciously 90s??), Megan is shuttled off to a reparative therapy camp—which, with it’s flamboyant heteronormative decadence, must’ve been a throwback to Miss Lyonne to her days on the Pee Wee’s Playhouse set—despite her refusal that she is “plagued” by homosexuality. Megan is brusquely welcomed by the equally sandpaper-toned Cathy Moriarty as the Hetero-Overlord Mary Brown, and told she must accept her sexuality so she can begin to overcome it. From then on much merriment at the expense of heteronormative parodying ensues: Megan meets her fellow recovering homosexuals—including the blithe Melanie Lynskey (and heavens knows I adore Kate Winslet, but I can’t help but feel a twinge of anguish that Lynskey’s career didn’t flourish as brilliantly as Winslet’s post-Heavenly Creatures)—goes through a series of absurd therapy treatments, including Edenic-Behavioral 101; and falls in love with Graham, played by the utterly incomparable Clea DuVall. Without delving much deeper into a plot analysis, let’s just say the film has the gayest of all endings. Think Cinderella in the back of a pickup-truck.

But to fully appreciate why this film is the most important piece of queer cinema for me, it’s necessary to ponder for a moment its Sontag-ian merit. That’s right, Susan Sontag, or S-Squared as nobody calls her. Even typing it I acknowledge how flimsily pretentious it seems to throw her name around–it’s like the fledgling English major who arbitrarily wedges Nietzche into every conversation, or that one guy who insists on wearing tweed and skulks in the shadows of your dinner party only to utter things like “You don’t know jazz. You can’t until you listen to Captain Beefheart. He teaches you to HEAR sound.” But Sontag, a stellar emblem of queer genius, and the extrapolations she makes on the aesthetic of “camp” are particularly fitting when unpacking Cheerleader and why, to this day, it still holds such a prized place in my heart. Sontag was a woman who had her fingers in many pies (which is not necessarily meant to be innuendo, but in her case the tawdry joke is also applicable), and her theories like that on the role of modern photography on cultural memory solidify her as one of the preeminent minds of the 20th century. She also had a longtime romance with Annie Leibovitz. And she had an affinity for bear suits.

But her groundbreaking insights on the style of camp, (a fully fleshed out adumbration of which can be found here) are most manifest in Cheerleader. A sensibility that is dependent on the grandiose, on double-entendres, and on the flamboyant satire of normalcy, camp is a rampant in Cheerleader. RuPaul teaches outdated masculinity adorned in the skimpiest shorts imaginable (and rightfully so, with those sensational gams); Cathy Moriarity barks, in one of the film’s many remarkably self-reflexive moments, “You don’t want to be a Raging Bull Dike!”; Megan woos Graham with a saccharine cheer at the mock hetero-graduation. Furthermore, the film’s style and wardrobe was inspired by John Waters, the reigning Emperor of camp and anemic mustaches. But what left such an indelible mark on me was the film’s campiness and the world of artifice it created that gave me a safe space to explore my identity. Certainly, it was ludicrous at the moment. But often times the preposterousness of it made it much more provocative to me. Moreover, the films tinkering with style and double meanings lit a spark in my fourteen-year-old cinema-phile self that led to my passion for film criticism, for the Mulvey’s and Sontag’s of the world that could offer me a deeper appreciation of cinema, and most critically, ignited the feminist fervor in me that has served me so well to this day.

But attesting to the notion of safe-space, outside of the film’s beloved campiness, But I’m a Cheerleader is my unrivaled top piece of queer cinema because it was the first film I felt secure watching, enjoying and acknowledging images of sexuality that I had previously abnegated. My existence up until that point had been one of self-imposed exile in a very dismal, skeleton littered closet, in which I, like Megan, vehemently denied the glimmers of “alternative attractions” that flittered (and by flittered I mean stampeded) across my mind daily. I firmly believed that if I were to witness any acts of same-sex canoodling or affection, I would instantly be emblazoned with some Scarlet-Letter-esque marker, so that all my peers would know I’D SEEN THE GAY AND NOW I WAS ONE OF THEM (fear not, I’ve evolved). The closest I came to queer cinema prior to Cheerleader was when I superimposed my own ideations on particular scenes in the film Nell in a hotel room in Florida, only to have to flee said hotel due to a hurricane besieging the coast. I thought the elements were literally chasing the queerness out of me. But then I mustered up my courage and watched But I’m a Cheerleader. And then I watched it again. And again. And so on. And so forth. And I had the epiphany that I was not meant to be punished for queerness, and that there was a place, even if I felt my feelings to be ineffable, where I could watch and develop my own sensibilities without the fear of judgment that I so often quaked in the shadow of. I give Cheerleader absolute credit for this. So, sure, it’s brash and occasionally tacky. Sure, the soundtrack has the insufferable whine of so many 90s queer-cinema-compilations. But it’s got moxie and balls (neon, tightly-clad balls). And it gave me the queer sanctuary I so desperately needed at fourteen.

And if nothing else, YOU GET RUPAUL.

———-
 
Eva Phillips may or may not be the unapologetic leader of the Milla Jovovich Adoration Army. When she is not studying every one of Madam Jovovich’s films, she is earning her degree in English at the University of Virginia. With an affinity for film, obsessive alphabetizing, and listening to infomercials for possible auguries of the impending apocalypse, she also cherishes writing poetry and convincing everyone of the merits of rescuing physically handicapped felines (of which she’s adopted several). She is not ambidextrous and is damn bitter about that, too.

 

LGBTQI Week: The Kids Are Terrible, The Sex Is Worse

 
(Pour me another … this is going to be a long night.)
 
This is a guest review by Nino Testa. When The Kids Are All Right came out in 2010, it was widely considered one of the best films of the year. (I happen to think the movie kind of sucked, but there is no accounting for taste.) The film was written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who is best known for her 1998 film High Art, perhaps giving Kids queer cred in LGBT and straight circles. Kids tells the story of two queer mothers, Jules and Nic (played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening respectively), whose annoying teenage children initiate contact with the donor whose sperm was used to impregnate each of the women. The mothers begrudgingly allow the contact, and in the middle of the movie Jules begins an affair with the sperm donor, played by the calm, cool and scruffy Mark Ruffalo. The emotional crux of the narrative revolves around Nic’s discovery of the affair, her subsequent emotional breakdown and the restoration of family tranquility as Nic decides to salvage her marriage despite Jules’ infidelity. Also: this is supposedly a comedy.

The film wasn’t just lauded as a cinematic achievement, it was also celebrated as a “positive” and “honest” representation of quotidian lesbian life in an age where gay marriage dominates any discussion of LGBT people. In addition to multiple Academy Award nominations—for acting, writing, and best picture, but not, interestingly enough, best director—the film has 93% positive reviews on rottentomatoes, so pretty much everyone who gets to decide that movies are good told us that this one was worthy of our time. Many of the reviews focus on the film’s supposedly groundbreaking “realistic” depiction of lesbians (I guess these people have never seen The Hunger.) Eric Snider from film.com refers to the characters as “realistically portrayed.” A.O. Scott from the New York Times writes: “The performances are all close to perfect, which is to say that the imperfections of each character are precisely measured and honestly presented.” Tom Long of the Detroit News called it “one of the year’s most honest and endearing films.” (“Honest” is the key word in all of these reviews. We might want to think about what it means to call a work of fiction “honest.” To say that it is “honest” means that it confirms, in some way, our worldview; it proves something we think to be true.) And then there is this gem from The Wall Street Journal, which really sums up the self-congratulatory, progressive reviews of this film: “The basic joke here, and it’s a rich one, is that the dynamics of gay marriages differ little from those of straight marriages.” This is, of course, the ultimate compliment that the mainstream press can make about queer people—that they are just like straight people. Judging from the film, what seems to be at stake is whether or not gay married couples can be as unhappy and passive aggressive as straight married couples, thus making them more deserving of legal protections.

In a Shewired.com article by Kathy Wolfe, the founder of Wolfe, the world’s largest exclusive distributor of lesbian and gay movies, Wolfe sings the film’s praises for its place in lesbian film history, calling it, without a shred of irony, “The Lesbian Brokeback Mountain”:

For a variety of reasons, The Kids Are All Right will be the most widely distributed lesbian-themed mainstream movie in history. Like that beloved yet sad gay cowboy movie, it has major stars in the gay roles: Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as lesbian moms. This ensures that the film will reach a wide audience. Most exciting of all — with its entertaining yet ultimately politically powerful message of putting a lesbian family front and center — the film will open hearts and minds very much like Brokeback did on its theatrical release.

Let’s read that statement again: “the politically powerful message of putting a lesbian family front and center.” What makes the film a positive political intervention, for Wolfe, is that lesbians exist as subjects, never mind the content of the film. Wolfe goes on to discuss “how far we’ve come” in the representation of lesbians in cinema and express her gratitude for the wide release of this film—suggesting that the sheer existence of LGBT-themed films by LGBT people (Cholodenko is queer-identified) is an unquestionably good thing for LGBT people, no matter what the films are about.

OK—so that’s the story about the film. Now, what of the film itself?

Let’s start with perhaps the most memorable scene in the movie, which finds Jules and Nic trying to make whoopee, but unable to get into the groove. They call in the big guns, as it were, and pop in some outdated gay male porn to get their juices flowing. Nic watches the porn while Jules—completely covered by bedding, because, you know, why would anyone want to see themselves having sex with Julianne Moore? So much for realism—takes care of business. Their annoying son catches them in the act and has a few questions about their choice of aphrodisiac. The entire sexual encounter has been a letdown from the get-go, but the interruption by the annoying son ensures that nobody will be getting off tonight. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Jules comments on the “realism” of lesbian pornography, suggesting that it isn’t erotic because the women in the film aren’t lesbians, which is, I’m assuming, a kind of joke about the film we are watching, in which two A-list straight actors are playing gay. What is so interesting about that joke is that it complicates the film’s own politics of representation (as articulated by Wolfe): Jules’ comment debunks the myth that any representation of queerness is as satisfying (sexually or otherwise) as any other.

(Headache? Great. I hate having sex with women.)

Contrast this underwhelming sex scene with the two opposite-sex sex scenes in the film. At the risk of generalizing and making normative claims about what constitutes good sex, both of the opposite-sex sex scenes—one with the Hulk and Julianne Moore, the other with the Hulk and Yaya DaCosta—are, objectively speaking, super f’ing hot. I mean, they are legit sex scenes. People are naked. People are getting off. Bodies are touching. There are noises. And rhythms. When Mark Ruffalo has sex with women, it is sweaty, passionate, multi-positioned, ass-baring, the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-heterosexuality sex; when Jules and Nic have sex, it is sad, lifeless, awkward and unsatisfying for literally everyone involved. It is unsatisfying for the women, who have a grin-and-bear it look on their faces; it is unsatisfying for the audience if they came to see cunnilingus so realistic that it would make them regret going to see the film with their parents (luckily Black Swan also came out in 2010); and it is unsatisfying for the women’s children, for whom their moms’ sexuality is a perpetual source of embarrassment: their porn, their toys, their PDA all elicit disgust from their children. And not just the typical “Ew gross my parents have sex” response, but legitimate mortification that the movie suggests feeds the children’s desire to meet their sperm donor. Their parents, according to the narrative, just aren’t enough for them—and they certainly aren’t enough for each other.

(Lesbian heartthrob, Mark Ruffalo.)

The contrast is, of course, the point. Jules and Nic are in a marriage-funk—Lesbian Bed Death and all that—thus Jules’s decision to look for new sexual thrills. I don’t think there is anything wrong with showing an unsuccessful or disappointing sexual encounter between queer women. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the fact that in a movie about queer women, the women need gay male porn to get off, or even that they desire and engage in sex with men, something to which some LGBT blogs and writers took exception (“girl, do you” pretty much sums up my philosophy on consensual sexual activity in movies or real life). But it does give one pause that a movie ostensibly about lesbians cannot imagine the possibility of satisfying sex between women, even as opposite-sex sex is portrayed as reliably orgasmic (newsflash: it ain’t). This film, which is being called the “the Lesbian Brokeback,” is organized almost entirely around the rise and fall of Mark Ruffalo’s penis. The narrative is phallocentric in much the same way as pornography featuring a male-female-female threesome (or any hetero-aimed porno) is phallocentric: the man’s penis is depicted as the most satisfying sexual toy, the most direct line to women’s pleasure. Sure, women can do some stuff to each other…but it’s basically foreplay, if it amounts to anything at all.

Further proof of the film’s phallocentrism comes from a quick search on IMDB where the plot key words listed for this film are:

Sperm | Sperm Donor | Biological Father | College | Restaurant

There is no mention of lesbians, motherhood, marital problems, or women at all. The fact that Mark Ruffalo’s character owns a goddamn restaurant seems to have more relevance than the fact that this is a movie about queer women. Moreover, the title of the film, which is the name of a Who song, emphasizes the well-being of the children—(See, gay moms can produce annoying, maladjusted and ungrateful teens, just like you!)—and deemphasizes the women who are supposedly kept “front and center.” For a movie that is being called a crowning achievement of lesbian cinema, lesbianism always seems to be not quite the point.

(They are the worst.)

Now, a movie about lesbian moms and the grown children who resulted from their insemination could, one would imagine, take on many forms. What we should be asking is: why this form? Why this story, and why this story as the one that we elevate to an enshrined place in lesbian cinema (It made the top 30 on an IMDB list of the “Best Lesbian Movies”). When critics call the depiction of lesbians “honest” what worldview has the film confirmed for them? It seems to me to confirm the lesson espoused by another “classic lesbian-themed” film, Chasing Amy—that all lesbians really want, all they really need, is sex with men. And none of this would bother me nearly as much if people didn’t talk about movies like this as “changing hearts and minds” and battling homophobia. It’s Glee-syndrome. If everyone involved in the movie—including the critics who reviewed it and the audiences who raved about it—weren’t so self-congratulatory, you might just be able to experience this as the mediocre film it is and relish in Annette Bening’s mastery of awkward tipsy dinner conversation.

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Nino Testa is a doctoral candidate in English at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. He also works at the Tufts Women’s Center and LGBT Center.

LGBTQI Week: Everything You Need to Know About Space: 10 Reasons to Watch (and Love!) ‘Imagine Me & You’

Movie poster for Imagine Me & You (2005), directed by Ol Parker
This is a guest review by Marcia Herring.
I was still a baby queer in 2005 when Imagine Me & You hit theaters in limited release. I’m sure I had recently watched Lost and Delirious, as baby queers do, and was traumatized by it, as baby queers are, but that didn’t deter me from wanting to see the star, a faux-British Piper Perabo in what looked like the cutest movie ever. I remember watching and re-watching the trailer and flailing around like Agnes in Despicable Me: SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE.

It never came to the sleepy little town where I went to college, at least not on the big screen. But when I got my hands on a DVD copy, I wore that sucker out. I swooned over it in my dorm room. I screened it for the GSA. I made all my friends watch. I left it playing on repeat while I cleaned, crafted, or did homework. I still do.

Directed by Ol Parker, Imagine Me & You is a relatively by-the-book romantic comedy. It starts with a wedding, where lovely Rachel (Piper Perabo) has pre-ceremony jitters, but they’re nothing a bit of pomp and circumstance and a quick pee at McDonald’s can’t cure. Her husband-to-be is picture-perfect Heck (Matthew Goode) who is shy, stuck in a job he hates, and willing to let Rachel take the lead on just about everything. The other shoe is left dangling after the vows are vowed and Rachel meets wedding florist Luce (Lena Headey) who rescues her from a minor predicament involving the ring and a bowl of punch. As Rachel attempts to navigate married life, she keeps returning to Luce and that puzzling little detail called attraction. There. The other shoe. It goes as romantic comedies do, building to the emotional climax where after all loose ends are neatly tied with a bow. There aren’t a lot of layers to unravel, images to deconstruct, and on an objective scale, it might not be the most unique or dazzling piece of film-making. But I’m not ashamed to feature it on my movie shelf no matter how you might feel about romantic comedies, and here’s why.

Note: the following contains links to TVTropes.com (a black hole time suck), spoilers for Imagine Me & You, and spoilers for several other gay-spectrum movies & television, including…. A Single Man, Bend It Like Beckham, But I’m a Cheerleader!, Friends, Kissing Jessica Stein, Lost and Delirious, Notes on a Scandal, Sunshine Cleaning, and Whip It.

They’re just friends. Very cuddly friends.
10 – Marriage Isn’t Happily Ever After

The film realistically introduces the idea that not all women who marry men 1) stay married to them, 2) stay heterosexually identified, and 3) are happy in those marriages. I recently showed the film to a married lesbian couple, one of which had previously been in a relationship with a man. She told me it was refreshing to see that, to see her story reflected on screen. In addition to questioning her sexuality, Rachel also struggles with the expectations of her mother, and then her husband to procreate. Coop brings up the question of whether sex is better after marriage, under the expectation that it continues.

The fact is that real marriage, whether or not one of the parties involved is questioning their sexual orientation, has problems. Through Luce’s profession, we see several people, including Heck, use flowers as a kind of healing balm for the myriad troubles of life. But as Heck discovers, if something actually is wrong, flowers won’t do a damn thing.

9 – It’s Funny!

Oh, Coop. What a sad figure of arrested development. He’s played for laughs as he continues flirting with a known lesbian who, we know, will never give in to his insisting that he’s great in bed. Perhaps he even grows up a little by the end, realizing that getting involved with married folks isn’t as cut and dry as he hypothesized.

There’s Zoey, too, Luce’s sassy gay friend, there to encourage Luce to get out there and date and to point out the sexual tension between Luce and “Barbie-heterosexual” Rachel. As if we didn’t know already.

8 – Lesbian Panic

It’s nice to see a realistic example of this very real phase. After all, Rachel can’t be gay! She just got married to a man! But her denial doesn’t run so very deep (But I’m a Cheerleader!, anyone?) that she isn’t willing to at least entertain the idea. In Imagine Me & You, lesbianism isn’t treated like some disease (Friends) to distance one’s self from. Instead, Rachel tentatively examines the possibility that she might have an attraction that she had previously ignored. She even uses research – very reasonable indeed!

Of course, that doesn’t stop the panic by 20th Century Fox, which cites the same-sex romance as “shocking” on the DVD blurb.*


7 – “Older” people have sex and relationships!

While we might linger in the No Older Gays trope, the film does an excellent job of showcasing “older” romance and the stigmas that come with it. The marriage between Ned and Tessa has grown cold after the birth of their younger, “surprise” daughter. She tends toward verbal abuse and he’s, well, less than exciting. Luce’s mother Ella is on the other side of the spectrum. Depressed either because of or despite being left by Luce’s father some years ago, she expresses interest in finding a life of her own, and a frustration that it should be expected to fit into a certain box of activities appropriate for a woman her age. A “shocking” revelation comes early on – these older characters have and desire sex! – and any discomfort with the idea fades as the humanity of the characters shines through whatever preconceived notions of what a relationship should be.

6 – Lesbians Are People, Too!

While Imagine Me & You doesn’t do much to challenge the way viewers accept how women look (this, I think, isn’t the story to drive home a point about butch presentation or androgyny), it also avoids coding either female lead as lesbian. When we first meet Luce, she comes across as somewhat non-sexual. Her look is shaggy-casual, but she works as a florist!

The film also comfortably side-steps gender roles with Rachel and Heck. Rachel has a professional writing job. Heck, currently working in finance, longs to be a travel writer. Rachel is the one who cheats. Heck is the one who has an emotional breakdown. (And more about Heck in #4.)

It isn’t easy to identify Rachel or Luce as butch/femme, or even as the “man” or “woman” in the relationship.

5 – Not the End of the World

There is absolutely a time and a place for films and media that explore the times when It Doesn’t Get Better; sometimes it’s nice to see a film where coming out isn’t the end of the world. Part of the reason this works in Imagine Me & You is the relationships built between characters. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to use the Bechdel Test when dealing with lesbian movies (hah!) but I think it’s important to point out that there are several scenes between women in the film, not discussing men or the love interest – regardless of gender. The strength of cross-generation connections is one of the highlights of the film, for me. Luce has a wonderful, nuanced, and open relationship with her mother that is a delight to see on screen. This sort of story can offer hope, amusement, escapism and a relatively non-threatening introduction to lesbians for the uninitiated (in fact, I plan on showing the film to my romantic comedy-loving mom).

Of course, the film could also be accused of over-simplifying things. Rachel makes the jump to coming out as gay both quickly and without contemplating the bisexual label (which might make more sense here). But then again, Rachel doesn’t shy from coming out, neatly avoiding the assumption that she might only be gay for Luce.

4 – The Dude Is Not a Douche

While there are times when Heck’s actions and motivations slip dangerously close to that of the Nice Guy(TM), he consistently knows better and when he is behaving like an ass, he takes steps to correct it. After all, Heck is the kind of guy who dances with kids at his wedding, who stands up to his “arse” of a boss, who seems happiest when his wife is taking charge, and who — in a moment I know I connected with — is afraid to ask Rachel if something is wrong because, what if it is?

The suggestion is there, if you look for it, that the hetero-romantic comedy wedding finale isn’t the happily ever after those films would have you believe.

3 – The Stars

Taking a moment to be shallow if I may: Imagine Me & You is a really pretty film. The direction is simple, but filled with clear lines and sharp colors. And the stars aren’t bad to look at either. The supporting cast features British staple Celia Imrie (random fact: she played the first female fighter pilot in a Star Wars film!) and familiar face Anthony Head (Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Matthew Goode, who plays Heck, is no stranger to gay film, having played the dead boyfriend in A Single Man, and the not-naked dude in Watchmen (:cough:).

Then there are the leads. Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly, Lost and Delirious, Covert Affairs) and Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Maybe it’s just me, but those acting credits speak for themselves.

2 & 1 – NO ONE DIES, ATTEMPTS MURDER OR SUICIDE, OR IS THREATENED OR THREATENING

So yeah. There’s that.

If you haven’t seen Imagine Me & You, you really should. It never fails to leave me with a smile on my face, and no one I’ve ever shown it to has hated it. That’s not a bad batting average.

*I took a quick look at the other films 20th Century Fox imprint Fox Searchlight has to offer and found what might be a coincidence, but also looks a little suspicious. Of the women-centric/lesbian-oriented films under the Fox Searchlight banner, almost all were problematic:  

  • Sunshine Cleaning‘s lesbian scene fell victim to the cutting-room floor
  • Whip It‘s Ari Graynor cited difficulties in getting roller derby’s queer culture on screen
  • Notes on a Scandal features a psycho lesbian
  • Bend It Like Beckham was originally written as a lesbian romance
  • and feelings about Kissing Jessica Stein range from delight to horror

This is hardly definitive research, but it makes me think harder about Imagine Me & You‘s final scenes. The implication is that Coop and Heck both have sexual happy endings (a child, an in-flight romance) while Rachel and Luce don’t even get to finish the movie with a kiss.

The film is also rated R by the MPAA, something I question because two “fucks,” a few “arses,” and zero nudity hardly adds up to something I wouldn’t allow a 17 year old to see. Even with some sexual discussion and two — count ’em, two — lesbian kisses!

———-

Marcia Herring is a writer from Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, but swears to have it done someday. She spends most of her time watching television and movies and wishes she could listen to music and read while doing so without going insane. She previously contributed an analysis of Degrassi, Teens, and Rape Apologism and a piece for the Best Picture Nominee Series on Atonement, and a review of X-Men First Class.

LGBTQI Week: Short Film: Tech Support

This piece by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 28, 2011.
Tech Support is a short film written and produced by Jenny Hagel. The film has won several awards–including Best Lesbian Short at the Hamburg International Queer Film Festival (Germany), the Audience Award at the Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and Best Short Film at the Fresno Reel Pride LGBT Film Festival–and has been an official selection at 16 film festivals.

Watch Tech Support:

Be sure to also check out Hagel’s very funny Feminist Rapper series: A Lady Made That, Real Ladies Fight Back, and This Is What A Feminist Looks Like.  

LGBTQI Week: Revisiting ‘Desert Hearts’

This is a guest review by Angie Beauchamp.

We all hold dear particular films that made an indelible impression on us. Somehow they connected to us as a viewer on an emotional or even a spiritual level; we identified with the story or characters in unusual ways; or we appreciated the craftsmanship so much that we could recite lines or remember the sequence of shots and all of the details in a scene. That ability to touch individuals while also reaching very large groups of viewers is part of what makes film such a powerful medium.
DVD cover image of Desert Hearts

Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian and hop on the train to start a life together.

For heterosexual women, the movies and television show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts, nothing of the kind existed on screen. We relied on romance novels from mail order houses like Naiad Press and feminist bookstores if we were lucky enough to live in a large college town or progressive city. Desert Hearts had a limited distribution (i.e. it was not shown in Podunk, Indiana), but it did find an unheard of large audience on screens across the country and abroad.

It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure up shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up, a romantic Hollywood ending.

Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they conjure up a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.

Cay and Vivian in Desert Hearts

Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.

Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.

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Angie Beauchamp is a freelance internet marketer, making her living by managing other people’s blogs and social media. She also runs the Lesbian Film Review.

LGBTQI Week: The Good, the Bad, and the Other in Lesbian RomComs

This is a guest post by Gwendolyn Beetham.

I have a confession: I love bad lesbian romantic comedies. I once had a summer where I watched little else, delighting in the bad hair, worse puns, and silly sex scenes.

Before I begin, I want to offer a point of clarification. When I say that I enjoy “bad” lesbian romantic comedies, I do so because the unfortunate truth is that there is little else (see here). But it is also true that, until we have a bigger pot to choose from, we can’t be too picky.

The bone I’d like to pick here is not regarding bad dialogue or unrealistic sex scenes, but with the depiction of race, religion, and culture in lesbian romcoms to date. And with that, another disclosure: I am not a film critic or scholar. What I am is a queer feminist academic (and self-disclosed lover of bad lesbian film). And what I’ve observed in lesbian romcoms is a noticeable pattern of “othering” when it comes to the acceptance of homosexuality.

There has been a lot of work in feminist and queer theory lately on the concept of “othering,” most prominently with the work on homonationalism, a concept first coined by Jaspir Puar. Without getting too academicy, the concept describes the way in which Western-based understandings of homosexual rights and acceptance are pitted against “other” cultures’ lack of rights/acceptance. It goes without saying that many of these countries themselves (the US is at the top of this list) do not extend full rights to the queer community. However, in positioning themselves against “others,” (white) Western cultures try to promote a more “liberal” and “democractic” showing of acceptance that proves that they are more “advanced” than “other” cultures. I think that this concept has great relevance for the way that lesbian films deal with race, class, religion, and culture.

Movie poster for Chutney Popcorn

The first example I’ll use to illustrate this phenomenon is the 1999 film Chutney Popcorn, set in New York, and centered around the Indian-American Reena and her white girlfriend Lisa. Although Reena’s sister is married to a white man, which their mother accepts, she “draws the line” at Reena’s lesbianism. Lisa’s mother is completely supportive – in a role almost as annoying in its supportiveness as Reena’s mother’s is in its disproval. The dualistic division of acceptance – white = accepting/brown = disproving – is clear.

In the hopes of gaining her mother’s acceptance, Reena offers to be the surrogate mother for her sister’s child. High jinx ensue. I won’t ruin the ending here (honestly it might be worth watching if you haven’t), but let’s just say that the more traditional characters in the film “evolve” towards the “right” way of thinking by the conclusion.

Shelley Conn as Nina and Laura Fraser as Lisa in Nina’s Heavenly Delights

Another example of the “othering” phenomenon is found in the 2006 Nina’s Heavenly Delights. While set in Glasgow instead of New York, Nina’s Heavenly Delights also features an Indian/white lesbian couple. Nina, the Scottish-Indian half of the couple, has returned to Glasgow from London, where she ran away to avoid an arranged marriage. She promptly falls for the white Scottish Lisa (apparently the name “Lisa” is code for white lesbian…), under the disapproving eyes of her family. Again, not to give away the ending, but you might guess that there is an “evolving” understanding of sexuality by the film’s end here as well.

The us/them othering and ethnic stereotyping in this film is all the more disappointing as it is directed and co-written by Pratibha Parmar. Parmar is a documentarian primarily known – in feminist circles at least! – for the 1993 film Warrior Marks, produced by and featuring Alice Walker. (If you haven’t seen that one, you should check it out as well – and watch for the cameo by Tracy Chapman, Walker’s partner at the time.)

The films Saving Face (2004)
 and I Can’t Think Straight (2008; and, yes, that really is the title) also feature disapproval from “traditional” families – Chinese-American in Saving Face, and Jordanian and British-Indian in I Can’t Think Straight. Although the films do not feature white partners with which to contrast the lack of acceptance from their families, cultural stereotypes and the process of othering nevertheless abound in both films.

In offering this critique, I do not want to suggest that cultural, regional, religious, class, and racial nuances in understandings of sexuality do not exist, nor do I think that directors/writers should start to gloss over these elements in their films. What I want to stress is that these nuances are not so black and white (no pun intended). The reality is that, sometimes, white lesbians are shunned from their families of birth, and black lesbians are embraced. And some brown lesbians are not rejected from their religious communities, but quite the opposite. These alternative narratives are not reflected in lesbian film.

It is refreshing then, that the pot of lesbian films to choose from is growing. For example, though technically not a romcom, the recent, and critically-acclaimed, film Pariah is a good example of how racial nuances can be dealt with on screen, showing that lesbians do not live in the “all or nothing” world that previous films suggest. We can only hope that the future of lesbian film will offer more realistic depictions of race, culture, and sexuality.

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Gwendolyn Beetham is an independent scholar, the editor of The Academic Feminist, and a semi-professional lesbian film watcher. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on twitter: @gwendolynb

 

LGBTQI Week: Growing Up Queer: ‘Water Lilies’ (2007) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011)

This is a guest review by Max Thornton.
Céline Sciamma’s films are ever so French. Light on dialogue, they tend to rely on lingering shots of longing glances and exquisite mise-en-scène to reveal character; loosely plotted, they leave the impression less of a story than of a series of vignettes, of tiny moments freighted with great import.

These techniques are uniquely suited to the onscreen portrayal of adolescence. It almost seems churlish to complain that Water Lilies and Tomboy lack full structural coherence, because that’s arguably intentional. Growing up, after all, is not a tightly-plotted three-act hero’s journey with clear turning points, tidy linear progression through the successive stages of personal development, and a satisfying ending. It’s a messy and confusing struggle to find a place in the world, littered with incidents that may or may not ultimately be significant (with no way to tell the difference), and most of the time the morals make no sense.

Sciamma instinctively understands this, and the little stories she tells of growing up queer are given vivid life through her two greatest strengths as a filmmaker: her ability to coax marvelously deep and naturalistic performances out of her young actors, and her eye for a strikingly memorable little scene that perfectly encapsulates a moment of overpowering adolescent emotion – the normally boisterous Anne clutching at a lamppost and weeping in Water Lilies, for example, or Tomboy‘s Laure curling up on the couch, thumb in mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by an earlier humiliation.

Both films are carried on the remarkably expressive faces of their lead actresses. There are no voice-over monologues or expository conversations, but both Water Lilies and Tomboy present the inner life of their protagonists with stunning depth and rawness.

Movie poster for Water Lilies
The protagonist of Water Lilies is Pauline Acquart’s Marie, a quiet fifteen-year-old with a crush on Floriane, star of the local synchronized swimming team. Marie’s best friend Anne, meanwhile, has her eye on Floriane’s boyfriend François. So far, so Gossip Girl, but there is nothing over-dramatic or sensationalistic about the way this love quadrilateral plays out. Although the film’s primary focus is on the blossoming friendship between Marie and Floriane, there is a clear thematic through-line of what it is to grow up female in the patriarchy. Marie, Anne, and Floriane all embody different ways of being young women, and especially young women coming into their sexuality.

Anne, though less conventionally feminine than the other girls, is confidently heterosexual and determined to sleep with the boy she finds attractive. Marie is so eager to spend time with Floriane that she agrees to help her sneak out to meet François, and her yearnings for the lithe bodies slipping through the water are beautifully conveyed through moments such as the shot of Marie shifting, flustered, as Floriane unselfconsciously changes into a swimsuit right in front of her. Floriane herself, despite the reputation she cultivates (perhaps recognizing that denial would be futile – once branded a “slut,” a teenage girl is hopelessly trapped in a no-win morass of contradictory social pressures), eventually confesses to Marie that she has never actually had sex, and in fact is afraid to do so.

“If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”

“I have to.”

“Where did you read that?”

“All over my face, apparently. If he finds out I’m not a real slut, it’s over.”

Floriane recounts several instances of sexual harassment from men; when Marie has no similar stories to share, Floriane tells her, “You’re lucky… very lucky.” And perhaps to some extent she is. Perhaps, as Anne and Marie float fully-clothed in the pool at the end of the movie, while Floriane dances alone for the boys she’s not certain she even wants to be with, they are considering their good fortune: they, at least, are strong enough to defy the patriarchal dictates around female sexual behavior, to name and claim their desires (or lack thereof), to make mistakes and learn from them without being defined by them. Growing up female in this world is hard, but they know they will make it.
Movie poster Tomboy
Tomboy tells a very different story of growing up queer. Zoé Héran turns in a truly remarkable performance as androgynous ten-year-old Laure, who, on moving to a new neighborhood, is asked by the friendly Lisa, “T’es nouveau?” – “Are you new?” – in a way that genders Laure male. In that moment, Laure becomes Mikael, a boy who spends a happy summer among his new friends and his puppy-love girlfriend Lisa. For the duration of the summer, Laure is confined to home and family (well-meaning dad, heavily pregnant mom, hyper-femme little sister Jeanne), and Mikael is the face presented to the world.

Any ten-year-old lives in the present, and Mikael meets each challenge as it arises – sneaking away deep into the woods when the other boys casually take a pee break; snipping a girl’s swimsuit into a boy’s, and constructing a Play-Doh packer to fill it; swearing Jeanne to secrecy when Lisa unwittingly tells her about Mikael – even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that eventually Laure’s parents must find out about Mikael. As loving as they are, they still exert some gender-policing of their oldest child: Mom’s delight at hearing that Laure has made a female friend (“You’re always hanging out with the boys”) might have been tempered if she’d remembered that “copine” can also mean girlfriend!

The relationships between the various children are superbly observed, and constitute reason enough to see Tomboy in themselves. The energetic activities of childish horseplay that give Mikael such joy in himself and in his body – dancing enthusiastically with Lisa, playing soccer shirtless, wrestling in swimsuits on the dock – are balanced by the many lovely domestic scenes demonstrating the closeness of Laure’s relationship with Jeanne. This is honestly one of the most moving and genuine cinematic portrayals of a sibling relationship in years, and after her initial shock Jeanne takes to the idea of Mikael like a duck to water, boasting to another child about her awesome big brother, and telling her parents that her favorite of Laure’s new friends is Mikael.

The parents themselves, unfortunately, are much less accepting of Mikael. The film’s ending is ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings of the exact nature of Laure’s queerness; indeed, the film has been criticized as “an appropriation of trans narratives by a cis filmmaker toward her own purposes”; but to me the ending is terribly unhappy. With deep breaths and with profound conflict on Héran’s preternaturally expressive face, the character is forced to claim “Laure,” the name and gender assigned at birth and not the ones of choice. The cissupremacy has won this round.

Though Tomboy is the better film, the two movies make excellent companion pieces. Between them they depict a range of queerness and explore a variety of strategies for growing up queer (and/or female) in a hostile world. And yet they offer no easy solutions, no cheap moralizing, no promise that it gets better. These films, and the characters they portray, simply are. And, in the end, isn’t that the one universal truth of queer people? There is no ur-narrative of queerness. There is no right or wrong way to be queer. We simply are.

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Max Thornton is a grad student and a stranger in a strange land, who writes words at Gay Christian Geek and has previously contributed a review of No Country For Old Men.

LGBTQI Week: ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’

Movie poster for But I’m a Cheerleader
This is a guest review by Erin Fenner. But I’m a Cheerleader, directed by Jamie Babbit, plays with stereotypes. But not like, “haha let’s use broad generalizations to create characters, but never develop them.” No, this film paints everything pink and blue (pretty much literally) and then asks the audience: Really? Is this what gender and sexuality should look like?It’s even in the title. But I’m a Cheerleader is about a teenage girl, Megan (Natasha Lyonne), who’s naïve about her own sexuality because she fits so comfortably into the norm of femininity. She’s Christian, an “all-American girl” and a cheerleader, so she doesn’t suspect that her attraction to women and sexual disinterest with men is a sign that she’s a lesbian.

It takes an intervention and her parents’ sending her to a “pray away the gay” sort of camp, for Megan to realize she’s gay. Her family sends her to the camp “New Directions” hoping she’ll come back straight, but it only instills in Megan a certainty about her sexuality she hadn’t had before. Not only does she realize that being a lesbian is part of who she is, but through falling in love with another girl at the camp, Megan finds out that she doesn’t want to change it either.

This camp, by the way, looks like it came out of Tim Burton’s nightmares: brightly colored, celebrating conformity and bursting with perkiness.

The director of the camp, Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty), “cures” homosexuality with a five-step-program. This program mostly involves making the collection of not-so-hetero teenagers act out their gender roles. The different campers are encouraged to find the root cause of their homosexuality – usually being a moment in their childhood where they witnessed adults deviating from gender norms. One’s mom wore pants at her wedding. Another’s mother let him play in pumps. Etcetera.

And so, Mary’s process is to push the adolescents into the cartoon versions of manhood and womanhood. The boys work with Mike (RuPaul) by playing football in solid blue uniforms, fixing a solid blue car and acting out war with solid blue weapons. The girls have their own solid pink version of this: changing baby doll’s diapers, cleaning house and painting nails.

And, through this process we can see how outlandish the performance of gender is. The characters themselves don’t fit neatly into their prescribed roles, and that’s what this film has fun with. We are presented with stereotypes that are swiftly debunked.Megan, for instance, is the exemplary feminine teenager: bouncy blonde hair, bubbly and, yes, she’s a cheerleader. But she also happens to be gay. Dolph (Dante Basco) is a jock who presents himself with military formality and is the first to be booted out of the camp for making out with a fellow male camper. On the other hand, Jan (Katrina Phillips) presents herself in a masculine way. She cries out during a group therapy meeting that, “Everybody thinks I’m this big dyke because I wear baggy pants and play softball and I’m not as pretty as other girls, but that doesn’t make me gay. I mean, I like guys. I can’t help it!”The film picks away at our association with gender and sexuality by presenting us with characters across the gender spectrum – reminding us that sexuality isn’t about whether you paint your nails, but who you are attracted to.

But I’m a Cheerleader does fall into some traps. In portraying characters that are outrageous, there are lots of stereotypically flamboyant gay men. It’s less heinous than most portrayals in the mainstream, and seems to at least be trying to have a purpose. We see Mary’s son, Rock, in short shorts dancing around while ostensibly doing landscape work; living up to the most ridiculous and irritating gay stereotype. But, it’s supposed to be over-the-top to reveal the hypocrisy and absurdity of the camp. Also, while the film does a great job challenging the association of gender and sexuality, and presenting a gender spectrum, it doesn’t explore the spectrum of sexuality so much. Bisexuality is invisible.

But overall, the narrative is one that successfully challenges sexism and heteronormativity. Megan’s journey of falling in love and accepting herself looks normal compared to the antics of those who support the camp. It certainly feels more natural and provides a heart to the film that grounds it.

Megan’s romance with Graham (Clea DuVall) has the perfect combination of silly sweetness and teenage angst. While Graham accepts that she’s gay and is sure it is unchangeable, she is willing to stay in the closet to continue getting support from her family. When Graham and Megan are exposed – Megan leaves the camp, and Graham stays.

Reparative therapy has been the butt of many jokes, but it has existed and been validated by hack psychologists who contort research in an effort to prove that being gay is a mental illness. Robert L. Spitzer who published a study that suggested reparative therapy works, recently made an apology to the gay community because the study has been used to back up harmful methodology. But I’m a Cheerleader tackles an otherwise troubling topic, and makes it funny while still remaining critical.

In the film, while some characters make an effort to be straight, it seems clear that all understand it’s a role they are playing to appease their family. The futile effort could be their chance to remain a member of the community they grew up in. Megan knows that choosing to be open about her sexuality could lead to losing her family, but she chooses pride and oh-so-heroically rescues Graham from the altar of straightness (literally.)

But I’m a Cheerleader isn’t trying to be subtle. The absurdity of gender expectations is put on display with a too-bubbly soundtrack. Because: our society’s gender expectations are insane. And, it’s downright crazy to try to force an identity and sexuality on a person. But, But I’m a Cheerleader gives us a little hope at the end of a wacky lace-trimmed narrative. While the camp wasn’t exposed, while the girls weren’t guaranteed their families, Megan still performed a radical action in embracing both her identity as a lesbian and as a cheerleader. She challenged the expectations of her prescribed role, and still got the girl in the end.

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Erin Fenner is a legislative intern and blogger for Trust Women: advocating for the reproductive rights of women in conservative Midwestern states. She also writes for the Trust Women blog and manages their social media networks. She graduated from the University of Idaho with a B.S. in Journalism.

 

LGBTQI Week: Cracks

This is a guest review by Emily Campbell.

This is a story about lesbian schoolgirls.

Those of you who have already seen Lost and Delirious, The Moth Diaries, D.E.B.S., Therese and Isabelle, Fucking Åmål, But I’m A Cheerleader, Heavenly Creatures, Bilitis, and every other lesbian schoolgirl film out there, just hear me out and try not to roll your eyes yet.

Cracks, the directorial debut of Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley Scott), is an independent film based on Sheila Kohler’s novel of the same name. Although it was released in Ireland and the UK in 2009, Cracks didn’t come out the US at all until 2011, showing on only six screens. While it takes several liberties with the book, setting it at an isolated British boarding school in the 30’s rather than a South African boarding school in the 60’s, the story faithfully focuses on a group of girls who make up their school’s diving team, their mysterious mentor, Miss G (Green), and the new student who overturns the status quo just by existing.

This is also, mind you, a lesbian boarding school movie in which neither the character with the crush nor the object of the crush tragically commits suicide. Now, I’m not going to swear to you that this is an entirely death-free film, or even that it’s a particularly easy film to watch. I will, however, swear that the characters are fascinating, the score and cinematography are stunning, and Eva Green’s costumes (thank you, Alison Byrne) will take your breath away.

And, for those of you with more refined interests, there’s a scene where she strips off and urges a group of students to join her for some late-night skinny-dipping. This is actually (a) relevant to the plot and (b) shot so beautifully it doesn’t feel gratuitous, both factors that could easily have proven to be pitfalls for several scenes. The entire movie manages to evoke sensuality without crossing the line into lewdness, no mean feat considering how effortlessly it could have portrayed the girls as archetypal nubile young things seething with sexual frustration. Instead, the emphasis is on the characters’ development, not the audience’s titillation.

“To dive is to fly,” says Miss G to her girls. “Set yourself free of the shackles of conformity. Let nothing hold you back except the air itself. You are between heaven and earth. The rules no longer apply.”

And let’s be real, if Eva Green was your diving instructor, you’d probably cede to her every whim too.

When we first meet Miss G, she happens to be wearing the ensemble pictured above while lounging in a rowboat with Di, one of her students, and discussing a scandalous book she had no qualms about lending her.

Di Radfield (Juno Temple) is the star of the diving team and something of a bigwig on campus, the Regina George in the 1934 edition of Mean Girls.

She’s also head over heels for Miss G.

Based on this knowledge alone (and possibly the same three plotlines that tend to occur in most boarding school movies), I personally would already be gritting my teeth in preparation for ninety minutes all about Di’s introspective self-loathing and her efforts to avoid the censure of her peers, the castigation of her teachers, and the denunciation of her desires. In most cases, I wouldn’t be far off the mark: usually, the character with the same-sex crush encounters some kind of scorn from others simply for daring to find another woman attractive, which then becomes the main source of conflict.

But that isn’t the case at all for the girls of the fictitious St. Mathilda’s. Di, instead, is admired for being daring. Already a natural leader, she has even more prestige by being the favorite and having the ear of the teacher all the girls idolize.

Nor does Di herself have any apparent issue with her feelings. “I’ve had rather a lot of lustful thoughts,” she admits during confession, one of only a handful of scenes to feature a male character. “Do I have to be sorry for all of them?”

Her teammates and sometimes lackeys, a garden of British blossoms with names like Poppy (Imogen Poots), Lily (Ellie Nunn), Laurel (Adele McCann), Rosie (Zoe Carroll), and awkward Fuzzy (short for Persephone, played by Clemmie Dugdale), are all in awe of her. One of the first scenes features Poppy eagerly asking if Di, emerging from the chapel, admitted to reading the book Miss G let her borrow. Di only scoffs that they can’t stay pure forever and she sees nothing wrong with wanting to know about the real world. And of course, she would never do anything that might get Miss G into trouble.

Miss G, who is cultured and serene and has a killer wardrobe, teaches diving (though always fully clothed and from the safety of a dock or rowboat) and apparently at least one additional class that involves textbooks. The only evidence we see of the latter is when she has the girls put their books away and then proceeds to regale them with tales of her adventures in far-off lands—which her students, of course, lap up without question.

Enter new girl Fiamma (María Valverde), the Spanish noble who happens to actually be as well-traveled as Miss G claims to be.

Fiamma, the living embodiment of the outside world, quietly challenges the authority of both Di and Miss G almost immediately. She joins the team and usurps Di as their top diver, exposes Miss G’s fantastical stories as word-for-word recitations of Mary Kingsley, and demands to know why the divers never compete against other schools. She is every bit the catalyst her name implies, causing the students to consider several of the questions we as viewers have been accumulating all along.

Until now, the girls have been accustomed to the remoteness of their lives, with only Miss G’s stories as a window to anything else. The school itself, located on a fictional island off the coast of England, is accessible only by ferry. Letters home are meant to show students’ “fine penmanship and turn of phrase” and are read by their teacher before being approved and sent. The divers share the same dorm and classes, bound into an elite little coterie by their positions on the team, led all the while by a teacher who never dives, never risks or plunges herself, but swears that the most important thing in life is desire and makes them all believe it.

While the rest of the team is amazed by her, Miss G in particular becomes fascinated with Fiamma, both wanting her and wanting to be her. Di, however, resents Fiamma for replacing her as Miss G’s favorite.

We learn, through Miss G’s snooping, that Fiamma was sent away for becoming involved with a boy of a far lower social status than her own. While Fiamma believes she will only be held at the school until the air clears for her back home, its almost ethereal isolation assumes a more menacing role when Miss G calmly reels off the names of other girls who also thought they would only be there for a short time. “Only Di,” she tells Fiamma, “realized this is forever.”

But Fiamma’s only response is, “It is not forever. They will leave you.”

Gradually it comes to light that, although Miss G constantly tells outrageous anecdotes about her life, she herself is actually a product of the same school. When asked by a ferryman, she coolly admits she does not care for open water. The one time she leaves school grounds, we see her mumbling to herself and visibly steeling up to stroll through the tiny town on the mainland in order to buy treats for Fiamma. As the girls’ coach, she easily plays the sultry storyteller who captivates them all, but once out of her element she literally isn’t able to walk the walk.

Her obsession with Fiamma manifests in progressively disturbing ways, from showering her with affection to stealing her belongings to a truly disturbing scene where she forces Fiamma to dive whilst on the verge of an asthma attack. While the other girls adore Miss G unquestioningly, Fiamma fails time and time again to be ensnared by her spell. And when Miss G learns that she can never regain control or save face while Fiamma is around, her resolution isn’t pretty.

This is a story about three passionate women that just so happens to take place in a boarding school: Miss G, who struggles to uphold the persona she’s created for herself within the institution she can’t leave; Fiamma, everything Miss G could never be; and Di, enthralled by her hero’s tales of far-off places but so reluctant to accept a person actually from one of them.

Cracks is guilty of falling into the characterization trope of the sophisticated mentor who isn’t at all what she seems, as well as the more troubling trope of the predatory deviant who clearly isn’t right in the head. As Miss G’s obsession with Fiamma escalates, so does her exposure as a pathological liar who glamorizes herself for the teams’ affections. The film also borrows liberally from the old boarding school standby of catty girls turning on each other at every opportunity (interestingly, several actors were boarding school students themselves when the movie was filmed) and their motivations blow hot and cold too quickly to seem logical at times—one minute they’re turning on Fiamma at Di’s behest, and the next they’re striking a truce and planning to have a midnight feast.

While the novel Cracks was titled after a slang term for a crush, throughout the movie we see actual cracks as they appear in Miss G, in the sway she holds over her girls, and in the complacence of the girls themselves when their world and their idol are shaken apart. The story ends with all three of the main characters taking leave of the school in different ways, a conclusion just open-ended enough to leave you wondering if the reality created for these girls actually is forever, or if independence is still possible in spite of it all.

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Emily Campbell is an M. Ed. candidate who has taught English on three continents and still secretly wants to be an Animorph when she grows up.

 
 

Call for Writers: LGBTQI Representations in Film and Television

It’s that time again!

This is a wide-open theme, and we welcome all proposals that examine LGBTQI themes in film and television, however one chooses to interpret it; there are, after all, no strict definitions. You can find a slew of lists online that might give you some ideas on where to start, and I’ll link to a few here:

Greatest Lesbian Movies

List of Television Programs with LGBT Characters

Lesbian Film Review

The Big Queer Movie List

List of Transgender Characters in Film and Television

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These are a few basic guidelines for guest writers on our site:

–We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 – 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.
–Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, June 22nd.
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.

Submit away!