Written by:
Diane Anderson-Minshall
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 16#6
Lesbian films are always feast or famine, with a new batch of fresh originals hitting the festival circuit (and sometimes DVD shelves) each summer. This past season a few must-see flicks may have been overlooked even though a lesbian auteur was behind the lens.
Loving Annabelle (Loving Annabelle Pictures)
In an era where teens are hyper-sexualized by Abercrombie ads and 12-year-old girls can buy cartoon-clad thong panties at Wal-Mart, it’s hard to imagine that a contemporary retelling of the 1931 German lesbian classic, Maedchen in Uniform, could be as compelling — or as titillating — as its predecessor. But Loving Annabelle, a lively and thought-provoking feature debut by hotshot TV director Katherine Brooks (who also co-created The Complex, the best lesbian series you never saw) is indeed compelling.
Slickly produced with production values matching a Hollywood blockbuster, Loving is the controversial story of Simone, a Catholic boarding school poetry teacher (played with palpable repression by Diane Gaidry, who has a slight resemblance — physical and in method — to Felicity Huffman), who is courted by a rebellious and charismatic new queer female student, Annabelle.
Erin Kelly, the actress who plays Annabelle, is more than a promising actor—she’s a ready-for-primetime player who I can already imagine taking roles from Evan Rachel Wood. And she plays Annabelle with a wonderfully willful sophistication that lets us suspend our concern, momentarily, about the fact that this is essentially a story about an adult having sex with a minor. The religious isolation of the boarding school, coupled with Simone’s claustrophic sense of physical repression, actually make us root for the two women to get together (the same way TV news viewers feel for Mary Kay Letourneau) without giving thought to the moral complexities of their relationship. It’s no surprise why it won the Audience Choice Award at the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Film Festival this spring. (lovingannabelle.com)
Black Aura on an Angel (Blue Butterfly)
Feature films about African-American lesbians are so rare that it’s hard not to thrill at the news of one. Thankfully, Black Aura on an Angel is worthy of that attention. A dramatic thriller about how mental illness affects a relationship, Black Aura is based on a true story that inspired director Faith Trimmel in Atlanta years ago. A modern Jill-of-all-trades, Trimmel is the film’s writer, director, producer, film editor, music supervisor and co-star, easily bringing the best performance to the film. While lesbian filmmakers shudder at portraying psycho dykes and bizarre bisexuals, Black Aura shows us why sometimes the utility of violence and archetype can be necessary, even engaging, and while indie production values and the heavy subject matter may keep some lesbians away, I promise it’s worthy of your time. (blackauraonanangel.com)
Cake (Lion’s Gate)
Indian-American director Nisha Ganatra was a lesbian superstar when her dyke insemination flick Chutney Popcorn came out. Her follow-up, the even more polished and delightful Cake, got nary a nod. Perhaps that’s because lesbians dismissed it as straight girl stuff best left to sorority chicks and women who like Lifetime movies. But they’re wrong. Cake follows Heather Graham as Pippa, a feminist, free-spirit travel writer who is surrounded by independent women friends (notably Grey’s Anatomy’s Sandra Oh and Scrubs’ Sara Chalke) and estranged from her publishing magnate father (think William Randolph Hearst). When Pippa’s papa is hospitalized, he asks his anti-marriage daughter to edit his bridal magazine, Wedding Bells. In a straight reading of Tassie Cameron’s script, this is a simple romantic comedy where we actually root for the feminist to find the joy of love (and men). But it’s not that simple; in Ganatra’s hands, Cake isn’t a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy but rather a genuinely funny, feminist send-up of the genre. Stereotypes are turned their heads, and the moral of the story isn’t necessarily about a women’s desires at all. (lionsgate.com)
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