Over five decades have passed since the American courts sought to stop cinemas showing Robert Aldrich's lesbian drama, The Killing of Sister George (1968), which was one of the first same-sex features to be made in Hollywood after the termination of the infamous Production Code, which had restricted freedom of expression on the big screen since 1934. To mark the anniversary, Cinema Paradiso presents a unique history of Sapphic cinema.
Making films has largely been a male preserve since the days of the earliest flickering images. Consequently, all too few women have been afforded the opportunity to direct mainstream or experimental works, with the result that female characters have been depicted through what theorists call 'the male gaze', a heterosexual perspective that reduces them to safe or sexualised stereotypes. Such was the marginalisation of women filmmakers around the world that, even when gay men started producing underground shorts in the late 1940s, only a handful of women like Maya Deren were able to examine life from the female viewpoint. Indeed, until the 1980s, the vast majority of films about lesbians were made by men, who, even with the best intentions, could only ever consider such topics as outsiders.
Nudges and Winks
While a growing number of studies have been written about gay cinema, its lesbian equivalent has been somewhat neglected. A number of shorts around the turn of the last century featured female vaudeville stars who dressed as men, but the most significant early picture is Sidney Drew's A Florida Enchantment (1914), an extract from which can be found on Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's The Celluloid Closet (1995) to show Edith Storey playing a wealthy women whose sexual orientation is transformed after she eats some magic seeds. Another landmark production was Charles Bryant's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Salomé (1923), which reportedly saw Alla Nazimova lead an entirely gay cast.
But the hotbed of silent films with gay themes was Weimar Germany, with Ossi Oswalda donning men's attire to escape her governess in Ernst Lubitsch's I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918), which is available from Cinema Paradiso on Eureka's Lubitsch in Berlin collection. As homosexual activity was illegal in most countries, film-makers had to use coded references when depicting gay and lesbian characters. However, G.W. Pabst was more explicit in chronicling countess Alice Roberts's pursuit of the free-spirited Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929). Leontine Sagan also flouted convention in charting Hertha Thiele's crush on teacher Dorothea Wieck in Mädchen in Uniform (1931), which was remade by Géza von Radványi with Romy Schneider and Lilli Palmer in 1958. Renate Müller excelled as the cross-dressing cabaret star in Reinhold Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria (both 1933), which inspired Victor Saville's Jessie Matthews's vehicle, First a Girl (1935), before being remade by Blake Edwards for wife Julie Andrews as Victor Victoria (1982).
A clutch of Hollywood films in this period also featured women masquerading as men. Marlene Dietrich notably kissed a woman while sporting a top hat and tuxedo in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930), while Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn respectively wore male clothing in Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1933) and George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Hepburn also donned aviator's gear in Christopher Strong (1933), which was directed by Golden Age Hollywood's only lesbian director, Dorothy Arzner, who had slipped same-sex allusions into Paramount's first talkie, The Wild Party (1929), which starred 'It' girl, Clara Bow.
A female prison had featured in Howard Bretherton and William Keighley's Ladies They Talk About (1933) and the studios would continue to set stories in jails, schools and convents in order to focus on what became known as 'butch' and 'lipstick' characters. Elsewhere, Florence Nash played an 'old maid' in George Cukor's The Women (1939), which boasted an all-female cast. When Diane English remade the film in 2008, however, Jada Pinkett Smith's character is openly lesbian. Yet, while performers like Garbo, Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck were supposedly part of a secret 'sewing circle' of lesbian and bisexual performers and commanded large followings across the gay community, the studios often presented Sapphic characters as neurotic victims who invariably met an unhappy end.
Another popular caricature was the predator, with Gloria Holden kidnapping Marguerite Churchill in Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter (1936) and Isabel Jewel luring Jean Brooks into a Satanic cult in Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim (1944), which was produced by horror maestro Val Lewton. Alfred Hitchcock also left the audience in little doubt that housekeeper Mrs Danvers was besotted with her late mistress in Rebecca (1940), which saw Judith Anderson (who was herself bisexual) becomes the first performer to receive an Oscar nomination in a gay role.
Around the time that footage of a celebrated San Francisco nightclub emerged in the anonymous home movie Mona's Candle Light, Agnes Moorehead played a strict prison warden in John Cromwell's Caged (1950), while Doris Day and Joan Crawford went West, buckled on a pair of jeans and enjoyed complicated relationships with Gale Robbins and Mercedes McCambridge in David Butler's musical. Calamity Jane (1953), and Nicholas Ray's cult classic, Johnny Guitar (1954). Ray also included a scene of Gloria Grahame receiving a massage from Ruth Gillette in In a Lonely Place (1950), which was released the same year that Kirk Douglas accused wife Lauren Bacall of being sick because of her intimate friendship in Mary Beth Hughes in Michael Curtiz's Young Man With a Horn. But lesbianesque characters were in relatively short supply in postwar Hollywood, as the studio chiefs clamped down on Communist tendencies and sought to promote a blend of domesticity and spectacle that would lure suburban patrons away from their new television sets.
Even continental cinema backed away from such themes, although Ingmar Bergman's Three Strange Loves (1949) saw Mimi Nelson attempt to seduce Eva Henning in a story whose undertones would resurface in The Silence (1963) and Persona (1966). Henning also plays a woman who commits suicide after being betrayed by her lover in Hasse Ekman's Girl With Hyacinths (1950) and the sense of suffering for passion resurfaced in Richard Eichberg's The Trip to Marrakesh (1949) and Fatin Abdel Wahab's Miss Hanafi (1954), a bold Egyptian film that saw Ismail Yasseen undergo an accidental sex change.
Nothing similar would be made in Hollywood for many years, although a sign of things to come came with William Wyler's The Children's Hour (1961), an adaptation of the Lillian Hellman play that Wyler had directed as These Three in 1936. Ultimately, Shirley MacLaine pays heavily for falling in love with Audrey Hepburn, the co-head of an exclusive girls' school, as would Sandy Dennis for her passion for Anne Heywood in Mark Rydell's The Fox (1967). But their courage in expressing her feelings went further than Cicely Courtneidge, Barbara Stanwyck, Claire Bloom or Grayson Hall respectively managed in Bryan Forbes's The L-Shaped Room, Edward Dmytryk's Walk on the Wild Side (both 1962), Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) and John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964).
With mondo documentaries like Joseph Mawra's Chained Girls (1965) and exploitation offerings like Diana Paschal's She Mob (1968) helping to change the agenda, as the Production Code fell into disrepute, more lesbian characters began to appear in mainstream features. Estelle Parsons earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for her performance as Joanne Woodward's best friend in Paul Newman's Rachel Rachel (1968), while films as different as Yasuzo Masumura's Manji (1964), Jacques Rivette's The Nun (1966) and Jess Franco's Venus in Furs (1969) all contained same-sex liaisons.
The Stonewall Effect
Few dates have greater significance to the cause of gay liberation than 28 June 1969, when demonstrators rioted in protest at a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Hence, Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg naming their landmark LGBTQ+ documentary, Before Stonewall (1984). This has since been followed by the likes of The Celluloid Closet and Caroline Berler's excellent Dykes, Camera, Action! (2018), which trace the ways in which film-makers sought to discuss gay and lesbian issues either side of this pivotal period. Berler interviews such pioneering directors as Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Yvonne Welbon and Rachel Reichman, who helped shape what critic B. Ruby Rich dubbed 'New Queer Cinema' after the outpouring of brave new works in the face of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
It was rather a case of lesbian film-makers having to play catch-up, however, as gay underground cinema already had icons like Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith and Andy Warhol. Moreover, as the male dominance of the mainstream and independent sectors continued unabated, many major pictures were directed by men, among them Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968), an adaptation of Frank Marcus's darkly comic stage play that was reworked as a weighty drama around the crumbling relationship between fading British TV star, Beryl Reid, and her restless girlfriend, Susannah York. A sex scene between York and Coral Browne led to the new MPAA certification board rating the film as an X and Aldrich fought an unsuccessful court case to have the verdict overturned. Moreover, a Boston theatre owner was jailed for six months and fined $1000 for showing the film after it had been banned by the city censor.
Accustomed to reading authentic depictions of the lesbian experience in literature, film-makers wanted to bring similar stories to the screen in order for gay moviegoers to feel validated and for straight viewers to relate to lesbians as human beings. However, in both America and Europe, the Sapphic image contained in features like Michael Sarne's Myra Breckinridge (1970), Ray Austin's Virgin Witch (1971), Brian G. Hutton's Zee and Co. (1972) and Jack Starret's Cleopatra Jones (1973) very much reflected the male gaze notion of presenting women for patriarchal pleasure.
Moreover, numerous films followed the lead of Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1960) by exploiting relaxed attitudes to same-sex sequences and nudity to show lesbians as lascivious vamps and witches in such horror-related titles as Jaromil Jires's Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), Jimmy Sangster's Lust For a Vampire, León Klimovsky's Werewolf Shadow (both 1971) and José Ramón Larraz's Vampyres (1974). Titillation rather than education was also the aim of Euro softcores like Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga, Domenico Paolella's The Nun and the Devil (both 1973), and Giulio Berruti's Killer Nun (1978).
By contrast, gay German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder took a less salacious approach to the ménage that forms between Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann and Hanna Schygulla in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), although successors Ulrike Ottinger, Rosa von Praunheim and Monika Treut ( Of Girls and Horses, 2014) have varied their tactics in finding new ways to explore exhibitionism, voyeurism and the female image on screen. Belgian Chantal Akerman also challenged audiences to see women enjoying each other's bodies while confronting the petty prejudices that cluttered their everyday existence in the likes of Je, tu, il, elle (1974) and The Captive (2000). However, Spaniard Pedro Almódovar opted to shock and awe-inspire with such gleeful romps as Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980), Dark Habits (1983) and Kika (1993).
Elsewhere across Europe, lesbians proved central to such diverse titles as Anthony Harvey's Richard's Things (1980), Károly Makk's Another Way (1982) and Stuart Burge's The Rainbow (1988). However, Hollywood took smaller steps in its approach to lesbian and/or cross-dressing characters in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979), Barbra Streisand's Yentl, Mike Nichols's Silkwood (both 1983) and Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985). But the release of more Sapphocentric offerings like Tony Scott's The Hunger, John Sayles's Lianna (both 1983) and Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts (1985) suggested that there was a sea change in the air.
All in the Best Possible Taste?
As there were still so few women film-makers in the commercial system, New Hollywood struggled to respond to feminism in the early 1970s. while the lesbian narrative got lost in the mix after the conglomerate-owned studios shifted the emphasis in the middle of the decade on to blockbusters aimed at adolescent boys and mid-life Peter Pans, who would invest in merchandise, as well as cinema tickets. Furthermore, the AIDS crisis prompted producers to focus on the tragic realities facing gay men. As a consequence, while the women featured in Caroline Berler's documentary contributed to produce works of experimental excellence and the festival circuit began to offer exposure to independent directors, the mainstream often seemed tentative, as it sought to produce pictures that presented lesbian themes in an audience-friendly way that unthreateningly avoided overt political statements, while also trying to convey sensuality without incurring accusations of pandering to the male gaze.
Perhaps the most iconic feature of this period was Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (1991), which was feted for its subtext, even though neither Geena Davis nor Susan Sarandon plays a lesbian. However, there is less love for the way that Paul Verhoeven presented bisexual crime novelist Sharon Stone and the envious Leilani Sarelle in Basic Instinct (1992) and rival dancers Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon in Showgirls (1996). Therefore, we await with interest his reunion with Elle (2016) star Virginie Efira on Benedetta, a life of 17th-century novice nun, Benedetta Carlini, which is due out later this year.
Reimagining the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder case that shocked New Zealand, Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) starred Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet as the teenage friends seeking refuge in a magical 'Fourth World'. Amanda Plummer and Saskia Reeves play the dangerous duo in Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1995), while Gina Gershon leads Jennifer Tilly astray in Lana and Lilly Wachowski's contentious guilty pleasure, Bound (1996).
The emphasis is more melodramatic in Herbert Ross's Boys on the Side (1995) and F. Gary Gray's Set It Off (1996), which respectively see Whoopi Goldberg and Queen Latifah essay a lounge singer and a thief. Joey Lauren Adams takes the title role of the bisexual who catches Ben Affleck's eye in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy (1997), while Mike Binder comes to regret suggesting the idea of a threesome to wife Mariel Hemingway in his less than subtle farce, The Sex Monster (1999).
The gaze is very much in operation as Denise Richards and Neve Campbell frolic in John McNaughton's Wild Things (1999). But the tone is more discreet as Angelina Jolie plays aspiring model Gia Carangi in Michael Cristofer's tele-biopic Gia (1998) and Lily Tomlin plays a lesbian archaeologist in 1930s Italy in Franco Zeffirelli's Tea With Mussolini (1999). Despite the shift in time, the ambience is much the same in Audrey Wells's adaptation of Frances Mayes's memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), which features Sandra Oh as Diane Lane's pregnant lesbian friend.
The action sprawls over three time zones as Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep share kisses with Toni Collette and Allison Janney in 1951 and 2001 in Stephen Daldry's The Hours (2002), which earned Nicole Kidman an Academy Award for her portrayal of bisexual author Virginia Woolf. Another novel, this time by Helen Cross, provides the impetus for working-class Natalie Press to lose her heart to well-heeled rebel Emily Blunt over the course of a Yorkshire school holiday in Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love (2004) - which won the BAFTA for Best British Film - while another chance meeting culminates in bride-to-be Piper Perabo and florist Lena Headey giving in to their mutual attraction in Ol Parker's Imagine Me & You (2005).
There's nothing playful about the dangerous liaison that forms between Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) and Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring) in David Lynch's blistering Hollywood Hills thriller, Mulholland Drive (2001), and the same goes for the clenches between ambisexual thief Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and trophy date Rie Rasmussen in a Cannes washroom stall and between co-workers Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in the Brian De Palma duo of Femme Fatale (2002) and Passion (2012). But proof that times were changing came when Charlize Theron followed Nicole Kidman by winning Best Actress for playing a Sapphic role in portraying serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins's Monster (2003).
More reductively, the same year saw Jennifer Lopez play a lesbian assassin in Martin Brest's notorious tanker, Gigli, while Natasha Wightman plays a young woman jailed for being a lesbian in James McTeague's Wachowski-scripted dystopian thriller, V For Vendetta (2005). Cast as a performance artist and a lawyer, Idina Menzel and Tracie Thoms are the lesbian lovers in Chris Columbus's take on Jonathan Larson's hit stage musical, Rent (2005). But, while they are out and proud, self-loathing teacher Judi Dench is very much still closeted in Richard Eyre's adaptation of Zoë Heller's bestseller, Notes on a Scandal (2006).
A school also provides the setting for Jordan Scott's Cracks (2009), as diving team captain Juno Temple falls for teacher Eva Green, in a story that contains echoes of Ronald Neame's interpretation of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), which earned an Oscar for Maggie Smith. Gynaecologist Julianne Moore and prostitute Amanda Seyfried have an intimate moment after the former hires the latter to test husband Liam Neeson's fidelity in Atom Egoyan's Chloe (2009), a remake of Anne Fontaine's Nathalie... (2003), in which Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Béart had refused to let their characters have a lesbian fling. However, the female villagers encountered by Matthew Horne and James Corden on a trip to Norfolk have no choice in the matter, as they become the victims of an ancient curse on their 18th birthdays in Phil Claydon's winkingly dubious romp, Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009).
It won't take long to realise that this isn't aimed at the same audience as TV-movies like If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), a triptych of Sapphic stories set in 1961, 1972 and 2000 that were directed by Jane Anderson, Martha Coolidge and Anne Heche in the wake of the abortion-themed trilogy in If These Walls Could Talk (1996), which was co-directed by Nancy Savoca and Cher. This was something of a golden age for lesbian-themed shows, with Ellen DeGeneres becoming a superstar through the sitcom, Ellen (1994-98). Equally influential was The L Word (2004-09), which centred on the lives of West Hollywood friends Mia Kershner, Jennifer Beals and Pam Grier. However, the BBC also made a couple of stylish contributions in teaming Geraldine McEwan and Charlotte Coleman in an adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1989) and Keeley Hawes and Rachael Stirling in Auntie's take on Sarah Waters's debut novel, Tipping the Velvet (2002).
Going Cosmopolitan
While American cinema was striving to hit the right tone, film-makers around the world were also beginning to explore lesbian themes. In France, Josiane Balasko scored a box-office hit as a cigar-chomping DJ who moves in with bored housewife Victoria Abril in the self-directed French Twist (1995). Much more controversial, however, was Jean-Claude Brisseau's semi-autobiographical drama, Exterminating Angels (2006), which sounds plenty of #MeToo alarm bells by having director Frédéric van den Driessche hire Maroussia Dubreuil, Lise Bellynck and Marie Allan for his study of female eroticism.
Markedly less confrontational are the works of lesbian directors Catherine Corsini and Céline Sciamma. Having given Karin Viard a same-sex past in The New Eve (1999), Corsini examined the obsession felt by Pascale Bussières after bumping into old friend Emmanuelle Béart in La Répetition (2001) and having country girl Izïa Higelin falling for 1970s feminist activist Cécile de France after running away to Paris in Summertime (2015). This wasn't De France's first Sapphic character, however, as she followed avenging the attack on best friend Maïwenn's family in Alexandre Aja's cult horror, Switchblade Romance (2003) by reprising the role of Isabelle in Cédric Klapisch's ensemble drama Pot Luck (2002) in the sequels, Russian Dolls (2005) and Chinese Puzzle (2013).
En passant, Breton fisherman's daughter Isild Le Besco (who is Maïwenn's sister) also has her head turned by city girl Karen Alyx in Anne-Sophie Birot's Girls Can't Swim (1999). Sciamma focused on first love in a teenage synchronised swimming team in Water Lilies (2007) before charting 10 year-old Zoé Héran's cross-dressing rite of passage in Tomboy (2009) and following the fortunes of the César-winning Karidja Touré after she joins an all-girl gang in Girlhood (2014).
Isabelle Huppert also takes solace in the comfort of strangers after she decamps to the island of Ischia after being betrayed by her husband and promptly falls for local lesbian Maya Sansa in Benoît Jacquot's adaptation of Pascal Quignard's novel, Villa Amalia (2009). Staying in Italy, Sansa and Regina Orioli hide out in a petrol station with the corpse of the latter's disapproving mother in Monica Stambrini's Gasoline (2001), while the scene moves to 19th-century Sicily for Donatella Maiorca's The Sea Purple (2009), a true-life tale of forbidden love that sees Valeria Solarino and Isabella Ragonese forced apart by the former's prudish parents.
Among the other important lesbian films to emerge around the Millennium are Swede Lukas Moodysson's Together (2000) and Show Me Love (1998) and Finn Aleksi Salmenperä's Producing Adults (2004), in which marriage counsellor Minna Haapkylä develops feelings for workmate Minttu Mustakallio while trying to get pregnant. In addition to Volker Schlöndorff's The Legend of Rita (2000), a number of German dramas also found favour, including Max Färberböck's Aimée & Jaguar (1999) and Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven (2007). Chronicling the true-life friendship between Jewish resistance fighter Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader) and Nazi officer's wife, Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler), Färberböck's powerful recreation earned its stars the Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival, while the central strand of Akin's triptych centres on the romance between fugitive activist Nurgül Yesilçay and student Patrycia Ziolkowska.
Equally potent is Angela Maccarone's Unveiled (2006), which sees Iranian refugee Jasmin Tabatabai enter into a tense relationship with Anneke Kim Sarnau after assuming the identity of a male suicide to pursue her claim for German asylum. On a lighter note, there's more gender-bending in Nana Neul's My Friend From Faro (2008), as Lucie Hollmann mistakes Anjorka Strechel for a boy after nearly running her down in her BMW. Meanwhile, a campus affair threatens to engulf Romanian undergraduates Maria Popistasu and Ioana Barbu in Tudor Giurgiu's Love Sick (2006).
Switching continents, frumpy Buenos Aires salesgirl Tatiana Saphir is kidnapped by lesbian punks Carla Crespo and Veronica Hassan in Diego Lerman's droll monochrome dramedy, Suddenly (2002), while across the Argentinian capital, teenager Inés Efron plans a robbery that will allow her to run away with Paraguayan maid Mariela Vitale in Lucía Puenzo's The Fish Child (2009). Thirtysomething literature teacher Ana Paula Arósio seeks to get over a broken heart with the younger Arrieta Corrêa in Brazilian Malu De Martino's So Hard to Forget (2010), while Bruno Barreto chronicles the troubled relationship between American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Mirando Otto) and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloría Pires) in Reaching For the Moon (2013). Further north, Canadia also has a strong tradition for lesbian cinema, as proved by Alison Maclean's Crush (1992), Lee Demarbre's Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) and Jeremy Lalonde's Sex After Kids (2013), while Australian John Duigan paired Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz in a ménage with Stuart Townsend in 1930s Paris in Head in the Clouds (2004).
Moving swiftly on to Asia, Taiwanese schoolgirl Guey Lun-mei offers to help best friend Liang Shu-hui hook up with swimming star Chen Bo-lin even though she wants her for herself in Yee Chih-yen's Blue Gate Crossing (2002). Compatriot Zero Chou goes for a broader sweep in Drifting Flowers (2008), which tells three tales from different times to examine how different generations of Taiwanese lesbians found love. Teenagers Samantha Tan and Ezann Lee hook up through an Internet chatroom in Eric Koo's multi-storied Be With Me (2005), which was the first Singaporean film to discuss lesbianism. Meanwhile, a case of mistaken identity leads Hikari Mitsushima to believe she's kissing another woman when she embraces Takahiro Nishijima in Sion Sono's Love Exposure (2008).
A Sapphic undercurrent also runs throughout Sono's The Suicide Club (2001), as well as Hong Kong director Clarence Fok's Category III actioner, Naked Killer (1992), the Thai duo of Piraphan Laoyont and Thodsapol Siriwiwat's Sick Nurses (2007), South Korean debutant July Jung's A Girl At My Door (2014) and Israeli writer-director Michal Vinik's Blush (2015). Few lesbian films have sparked more controversy than Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996), the first part of an elements trilogy that was completed by Earth (1998) and Water (2005). Centring on the New Delhi romance between new bride Nandita Das and sister-in-law Shabana Azmi, this pioneering Bollywood drama prompted an attempt to have it banned by the censor and attacks on cinemas by members of the Shiv Sena group.
Ultimately, the picture was shown uncut and influenced the relationships between best friends Ishaa Koppiker and Amrita Arora in Karan Razdan's Girl Friend (2004), emotional intimates Payal Rohatgi and Tina Mazumdar in Shrey Srivastava's Men Not Allowed (2006) and Hindu Suhasini V. Nair and Catholic Shruthy Menon in Ligy J. Pullappally's The Journey (2004), which was the first Sri Lankan film with lesbian characters.
State of Independence
The driving force behind New Queer Cinema was producer Christine Vachon, who did much to launch the careers of Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant. She also produced Rose Troche's Go Fish (1994) and Mary Harron's Valerie Solanas biopic, I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Released the same year, Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman was even more audacious, as it added faux-documentary elements to the romance between Dunye's video store clerk and customer Guinevere Turner as Dunye researches the career of Fae Richards, a black film actress from the 1930s who was billed solely as 'The Watermelon Woman'. Another important film of this period was Jennie Livingston's award-winning actuality, Paris Is Burning (1990), which chronicled the 1980s New York drag ball scene that controversially inspired Madonna's hit, 'Vogue'.
Not everyone approved of the postmodern approach adopted by many New Queer film-makers, with some dismissing them as elitists who reinforced negative stereotypes with their 'Homo Porno'. However, in crossing genres and blending classical and avant-garde techniques, they challenged conventional notions of homosexual identity and visibility and prompted a reappraisal of how gays and lesbians had been depicting in the past. Nevertheless, audiences didn't always respond positively to such theorising and a clutch of home entertainment labels began raiding LGBTQ+ festivals to find feel-good representations that repurposed the happy ending of Hollywood romcoms and melodramas.
Coming out is a recurring theme of these low-budget indies and few explore the theme of self-recognition with more finesse than Nicole Conn, who focused on middle-aged and/or married women discovering their sexual selves in Claire of the Moon (1992), Elena Undone (2010) and Perfect Ending (2012). Having impressed with her debut short, Dinner Party (1997), Lisa Cholodenko was feted for her first feature, High Art (1998), in which photographer Ally Sheedy rethinks her relationship with German junkie Patricia Clarkson after meeting neighbour Radha Mitchell. Following Laurel Canyon (2002), Cholodenko worked on The L Word before basing The Kids Are All Right (2010) on her own experience of having a child with a sperm donor. Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo were showered with award nominations, while Cholodenko was cited for her screenplay and landing a Best Picture nod at the Oscars prior to reinforcing her reputation with her tele-adaptation of Olive Strout's Pulitzer-winning novel, Olive Kitteridge (2014).
By far the most prolific director to come to prominence in this period is Jamie Babbit, who scored a cult hit with But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), in which demure Natasha Lyonne is guided towards making an important decision by Clea Duvall after they meet at a reparative therapy camp designed to 'cure' them of their lesbian leanings. Her success led to Babbit being hired to direct episodes of shows like The Gilmore Girls, Nip/Tuck, Pretty Little Liars, Revenge, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Supergirl, Looking and The Orville. She also made shorts like Stuck (2001), which can be found in the second of Peccadillo's three Here Come the Girls collections. But she has also continued to make features with lesbian themes, including The Quiet (2005) and Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007).
Also worth seeking out are the films of Lee Friedlander and Shamim Sharif. The former charted the romance between stage actresses Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon in Girl Play (2004) before swapping drama for farce in Out At the Wedding (2007), which sees Andrea Marcellus try to hide her relationship with a mixed-race man by inviting lesbian Cathy DuBuono to sister Desi Lydic's big day. Born in London of South Asian and South African heritage, Sharif based her first two features on her own novels. In The World Unseen (2007), newly immigrated wife Lisa Ray breaks all manner of taboos by falling for café owner Sheetal Sheth in 1950s Cape Town, while in I Can't Think Straight (2008), the same pair play a Palestinian Christian preparing for her wedding in Jordan and a British Indian Muslim. Sharif has also teamed with partner Hanan Kattan on the documentary, The House of Tomorrow (2011), which profiles women attempting to change the world one step at a time.
Among the other UK titles to check out are Nancy Meckler's Sister, My Sister (1994), Jan Dunn's Gypo (2005) and Catherine Taylor's Temptation (2009). However, the pick has to be Lisa Gornick's £1000 debut, Do I Love You? (2003), a London lesbian variation on the kind of introspective musing associated with mid-period Woody Allen that sees Gornick's bicycling thirtysomething question her existence after reaching a crossroads with girlfriend Raquel Cassidy. The duo joined forces again for Tick Tock Lullaby (2007), in which they play a cartoonist and lawyer contemplating parenthood. Most recently, Gornick cast herself as a graphic novelist, whose relationship with Anna Koval comes under strain when Allan Corduner offers to become her publisher in The Book of Gabrielle (2017).
North America dominates the market where coming out, first love and mid-life crisis movies are concerned. However, space prevents us from doing more than namechecking some of the many titles available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. Among them are Yurek Bogayevicz and Mitch Glazer's Three of Hearts (1993), Kelli Herd's It's in the Water (1997), Heidi Arneson's Some Prefer Cake (1998), Kim Tae-Yong and Min Kyu-Dong's Memento Mori (1999), Samantha Lang's The Monkey's Mask (2000), Lauren Himmel's Treading Water (2001), Vic Sarin's Love on the Side, Sascha Rice's Mango Kiss (both 2004), Maria Maggenti's Puccini For Beginners (2006), Ned Farr's The Gymnast (2007), Robert Crombie's Summer Lover (2008), Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It and Wendy Jo Carlton's Hannah Free (2009).
A few gems do leap out, however, including Maria Maggenti's The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in Love (1995), which was one of the first lesbian indies to make a commercial impact through its joyful telling of teenage tomboy Laurel Holloman's cross-track journey of discovery with Nicole Ari Parker after her Range Rover-driving classmate stops at the gas station where she works after school. An unexpected romance also beckons for Alison Folland in Alex Sichel's All Over Me (1997), when her attempts to recruit best friend Tara Subkoff for her band in New York's Hell's Kitchen brings her into the orbit of punk guitarist Leisha Hailey. The tone is more serious in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999), however, a biopic of trans man Brandon Teena that earned a Best Actress award for Hilary Swank and a Best Supporting nomination for Chloë Sevigny, as Teena's girlfriend, Lana.
Sadly, it's not currently possible to see Sheila McCarthy in Canadian Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), but Cinema Paradiso can offer compatriot compensation in the form of Anne Wheeler's Better Than Chocolate (1999) and Léa Pool's Lost and Delirious (2001). The former sees Karyn Dwyer have to hide the fact she works in a lesbian bookshop and has just started dating artist Christina Cox when unsuspecting mother Wendy Crewson pays a surprise visit to Vancouver. Inspired by Susan Swan's novel, The Wives of Bath, the latter is set at a posh girls' boarding school and traces the fall out when Mischa Barton realises that roommates Piper Perabo and Jessica Paré are sleeping together.
Written by its leads, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) is based on an off-Broadway play entitled Lipschtick and stars Jennifer Westfeldt as a journalist who fights her growing attraction to Heather Juergensen, the stranger she met in a New York bar. The Big Apple also provides the setting for Alice Wu's engaging comedy, Saving Face (2004), which sees surgeon Michelle Krusiec try to find pregnant mother Joan Chen a boyfriend so she can continue her romance with dancer Lynn Chen. However, the action is much brasher in Angela Robinson's cult favourite, D.E.B.S. (2004), a parody of Charlie's Angels (1976-80) that pits crime boss Jordana Brewster against college superspies Sara Foster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki and Jill Ritchie, whose corps takes its initials from the key training words, Discipline, Energy, Beauty and Strength.
The New New
How times have changed since Alison Steadman and Myra Frances exchanged the first lesbian kiss on British television in Peter Gill's BBC army drama, Girl (1974). Subsequently, there have been Sapphic romances in such soaps as Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders, while lesbian characters and undertones have been seen and felt in shows like Girls (2012-17), Orange Is the New Black (2013-) and Killing Eve (2018). Moreover, a growing number of films and TV programmes are being produced, written and directed by gay women, while the media finally seems to have ceased being so slack-jawed by the presence in the spotlight of so many so-called celesbians.
Male directors continue to make films with lesbian characters, including Julio Medem ( Room in Rome, 2010), Park Chan-wook ( The Handmaiden, 2016) and Marcello Martinessi ( The Heiresses, 2018). But the backlash directed at Abdellatif Kechiche for his depiction of the love scenes between Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos in the divisive Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) has undoubtedly impacted upon the physical sequences in such acclaimed offerings as Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy (2014), Todd Haynes's Carol (2015), Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience, Jonathan Dayton's Battle of the Sexes (both 2017), Bruce LaBruce ( The Misandrists ), Wash Westmoreland's Colette and Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite (all 2018), which earned Olivia Coleman the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Supporting nominations for co-stars Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone.
These accolades fuelled the debate about the legitimacy of straight performers playing gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans characters in films and shows like Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behaviour (2014) and The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018). But the genie is most certainly out of the bottle and Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy the results in pictures like Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance (2011), Campbell Ex's Stud Life (2012), Kai Alexander's Broken Gardenias (2014), Song Yong Kim's Lovesong (2016), Monja Art's Seventeen (2017) and Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), which earned Melissa McCarthy a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as a lesbian manuscript forger. However, they will have to wait until later in the year to see the likes of Chanya Button's Vita and Virginia (2018), as well as anything that happens to break out from events like the BFI's annual Flare festival.
