have you felt cared for?

when was the last time someone washed your hair? touched your arm gently, mindlessly, softly

oh.

did you cry? a silent, steady tear falling down your cheek as your heart beat as though you had two, jumping in eagerness, yearning, disbelief

did your eyes well up? flooding with awe that someone could be so tender to you

to me?

to you.

you deserve this, somewhere in the back of your mind whispers, and you think you might believe it

i deserve this.

you do.

you do.

have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?

you think you gasp as you realize you understand now what that song is about. what all the songs are about

your forehead creases at the thought of glitter. it’s much more ethereal than that.

it’s far too tangible, it should be more like haze

like something otherworldly

like something divine.

because you think you believe in god when arms wrap around you.

you see yourself in what you think must be the future, but could be the present. could be now. could be anytime, really. time doesn’t mean anything anymore because you think you might finally be home

you see yourself, you see them. together. waiting for you. sitting in the garden, clutching your coffee

you don’t drink coffee, but you would, you would. to have them clutch it like they’re clutching you now. like you are warm and safe and heavenly

they haven’t spoken, but you hear their words through their touch. calling you sugar. calling you loved. calling you home.

you ask them to wash your hair, and they do. they wash the ache and oil out with a tender touch, and oil has never mixed well with water and now you’re drowning, drowning, drowning in a waterfall of their reverence

do you feel cared for?

do you feel held?

when is the last time you’ve felt at peace?

you close your eyes

exhale

mmm.

it is now, it is now, it is now

It should be impossible to feel so heavy and so light at the same time — to be dense yet weightless. Bursting yet empty. My head is saturated with a viscous and opaque vapor, filling the volume of the space it inhabits with neither restraint nor permission. It is black like tar and as white as nothingness.

I’ve lost my Lexapro in the pile of clothing I cannot put away without the help of medicine. It has fallen, lost in an accumulation of unwashed t-shirts and into a pool of my ivory oblivion. It might live there forever. I should go find it, but I am scared the pile might swallow me whole. Perhaps it already has.

My sheets are as dirty as my floor as my dishes as my brain. My room is too small for all it contains. The clothes will burst out of the walls soon, I’m sure of it, cracking me open along the way.

I am to be reminded that this is a puzzle, not a curse — an obstacle, not a burden. But it has not felt very much like I am remembering. I’m hardly even echoing. Sometimes I wonder if I ever knew it at all. I think I must be lying.

I look at my mother and father for relief and instead find their own pile of emotional neglect, littered with bottles I know exist but cannot see. I implore you to tell me that these are not the cards I must succumb to. We have tried to build houses out of these cards, sure. We pretend that they are sturdy, just as we pretend that the insides are not bare. “Look at the house we built,” we say. Isn’t it grand? Perhaps I should learn to appreciate that I have that house at all. Perhaps I should burn it down.

My father stumbles with clumsy feet. I shuffle mine so as to not stumble, but I am told that I should pick mine up. Walk with intention! Stop ruining the bottoms of your shoes! We spent money on those, you know! I understand — I have since started buying my own shoes, and I don’t want to ruin them. Now I even buy my own bottles, too. I can see them, but pretend they don’t exist. They sit collecting dust, adding to the pile.

My room is too small. My house is too fragile.

To feel is to be alive, yet so much feeling has invaded that it has left no more room for life. My space is filled with conflict and accommodation and negotiations I do not want to make. There is not enough room. I want to be big. I want to spill. I am full in the wrong places — my body makes adipose tissue but no serotonin. It gives me an excess of gut but a paucity of stability. I find myself wondering what there is left to be at peace with. I must hate myself. Do I?

If I let myself burst, I am convinced I will explode. I will detonate. I will destroy. There will be nothing but pieces, and no one will help me pick them up. I will stand in the glory of my eruption and I will be alone. But I will not stumble.

This is part five of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always. | Previous Movie: Princess Cyd

Week 5: Kiss Me, 2011. Dir. Alexandra-Therese Keining.

Netflix Synopsis: When Mia attends her estranged father’s engagement party and meets her soon-to-be stepsister, sparks fly and Mia unexpectedly falls in love.

Swedish writer-director Alexandra-Therese Keining’s film Kyss Mig (released in English-speaking countries as Kiss Me or With Every Heartbeat) has a reputation of being one of the better female queer movies available. Legend has it that it’s one of the least campy out there. But in a film canon that sadly doesn’t feature the most prestigious of works, it’s easy for that reputation to not mean much and for “not campy” to still be painful. Luckily for Keining, neither are the case for Kiss Me, a film that is not just the best of the worst, but legitimate and fulfilling.

Though fully qualified to boast an additional title of Swedes with Great Sweaters, Kiss Me actually centers around Mia (Ruth Vega Fernandez) and Frida (Liv Mjönes), soon-to-be step sisters who meet each other at the engagement party for their father and mother, respectively. Frida flies solo, and Mia arrives with recent fiancé Tim, who awkwardly, and, given the setting, questionably announces their newly impending nuptials to the crowd. Lasse is elated to celebrate his estranged daughter’s engagement. Mia, it seems, is embarrassed to even be there.

Mia carries this wariness of her own state of being throughout the first part of the film, and the impression that her romance with Tim might be contributing to this hesitation is apparent from the very beginning of Kiss Me when it opens with an upside-down shot of the two having sex. This is the only time the film employs this angle, and it pointedly and effectively injects the relationship with a vulnerability that foreshadows its looming downfall. And though both parties seem to be none the wiser to this peculiarity, the audience is immediately unsure of the union. This unsteadiness only grows as the film progresses, and the vague sense that Mia’s commitment to Tim is performative becomes palpable from this moment forward. She’s not lying to us or really even to herself— she’s not quite aware that there’s anything to lie about. Nonetheless, the moment she lays eyes on Frida, her life changes.

The catalyst of this change is of course the quintessential Longing Lesbian Look From Across the Room that Frida delivers while Mia and Tim kiss. The look, as well as Frida’s sexual orientation, go completely over Mia’s head, who later gives very gay Frida grief for maybe sleeping with her brother Oskar. It’s family and it’s gross, says Mia. “It’s not like we have the same parents,” Frida retorts with a twinkle in her eye as she smirks in her step-sister’s direction.

It is on an island at the family summer house where we see Mia and Frida’s first kiss (and also Mia’s first Great Swedish Sweater). Surprisingly, Mia makes the first move. “Why’d you kiss me?” Frida probes, a question that Mia answers with another lip-lock and then an attempt at a quick escape. But despite her best efforts, she can’t get off the island until the next morning. So the next logical step is obviously to make out again, only this time after stripping down to their underwear and going swimming in a nearby lake. Somehow, Mia is surprised to learn that Frida is gay. Frida is equally as surprised to learn that Mia didn’t know she was gay. “Why did you kiss me?” Frida presses again. Like clockwork, Mia summons the expert avoidance skills of any closeted queer by insisting that she loves Tim and is “not like” Frida. Then she runs away.

Mia is so decidedly “not like” Frida that she runs away all the way into her bed later that night, where the two have some pretty convincing gay sex that is notedly and importantly not shot on an inverted angle. They are adorable and loving until rescue off the island comes by way of Tim and a pickup truck, and Mia soon finds herself ashamed, unsure, and quite literally stuck between the two.

The rest of Kiss Me is a visually compelling and generally well-written exploration of Mia’s newly discovered bisexuality and the love triangle she finds herself in because of it. It is one of the most non-campy films available to the female-identifying LGBTQ community; it feels like a movie about queer women rather than a Queer Women Movie. It has its flaws, the most glaring ones being the presence of a fair share of tropes — there’s an “I can’t do this!” moment, some relationships painfully end due to the hero romance, and there’s some cute homophobia. But what it lacks in these aspects it very much makes up for in others: Mia is acknowledged and respected as a bisexual, there are nuanced discussions about sexual orientation and bigotry, and the queer characters are not caricatures.

Despite its flaws, Kyss Mig is an uplifting and enjoyable queer story. It is a legitimate film about relationships and the people in them who just happen to be not heterosexual. Keining focuses on telling a human story first and gay story second and thus refreshingly avoids vilifying the queerness of her main characters. As a result, her film is indeed one of the best available in the Lesbian Film canon. It wouldn’t hurt American filmmakers to take a page out of the Swedes’ book on queer cinema. And maybe a page about the their sweaters, too.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: 0
Queer Director: Unknown
Queer Writer: Unknown
Queer Actor(s): No

Watch Kiss Me
Next movie: Concussion

Disobedience, 2018. Dir. Sebastián Lelio

My friend and I made a list of predictions as we walked into the theatre to see Disobedience. It’s a film about two queer women, and when Hollywood takes on such a subject, unspoken qualifiers come with it. Tropes that the entertainment industry cannot seem to shake have been present in every female queer movie we’ve ever seen, and the checklist of the reused and recycled storylines that all of these films boast is significant. To our credit, but not to our surprise, many of our predictions about this film were correct.

Set in an Orthodox Jewish community in Northern London, Sebastián Lelio’s Disobedience tells the story of a rekindled relationship between once teenaged lovers Esti (Rachel McAdams) and Ronit (Rachel Weisz). Ronit is reunited with her childhood peers and family when she comes back home from New York for her father Rabbi Krushna’s funeral, and as a result she finds herself thrown back into the religious community she so boldly left. It is a story of faith, identity, and female relationships.

Ronit’s return to London finds her face to face with Dovid — her cousin, her childhood best friend, and her father’s apprentice. Excusing himself from sitting shiva for her late father, he stands outside his door and tells her that they weren’t expecting her. She balks. He lets her in. As she makes her way through the house it becomes increasingly apparent that she is out of place. “You look very New York,” someone suggests. Ronit pulls her leather jacket closer, nods, and heads out back for a cigarette.

She has missed quite a lot: her father’s illness, her father’s subsequent death, and Dovid’s marriage to Esti. Though her peers would disagree, it’s not really her fault that she’s missed all of this; sure, she left home, but no one ever called her. She takes all of it in stride though, just as she takes Dovid up on his offer to stay with him and Esti while she’s in town. It’s an awkward arrangement at first — it seems the two women might not like each other very much anymore. In reality, it’s quite the opposite, and Dovid is none the wiser to any of it.

Despite their close quarters, it takes about 45 minutes for Esti and Ronit to be completely without the presence of men, and it takes an hour for them to touch. Perhaps this is a component of the Orthodox Jewish setting, a facet of the movie that I cannot speak to, but in a two hour long movie about two queer women’s relationship, this feels significant. It’s not necessarily negative, as it allows sexual tension to grow and the world around them to gain detail and color. And in some ways, the decision prioritizes the characters themselves over their sexual orientations, which is not always the case in movies featuring LGBTQ+ characters. However, it essentially makes the first half of the movie about a heterosexual couple and their photographer friend who’s in town. When they finally do touch, though, they don’t stop. There are kisses and touches and sex that, to Lelio’s credit, is not tender or gentle or sweet. It is a six-minute long scene between two women that is explicitly erotic. It’s urgent and hungry and years in the making, and, not to mention, gives a new meaning to the phrase “spit take”.

In an interview with IndieWire, Lelio states that the sex was about “how they find themselves through getting lost” and was meant to convey the “paradox between being lost and deeply in touch with who you are”. And while Disobedience is obviously beholden to the ethos of the religious community in which it takes place, being queer and being lost are not mutually exclusive. One does not equate to the other, and queer sex can in fact exist in a space free of any negativity or consequences, though the history of queer cinema and even this film itself would have you begging to differ.

Notably, actress and producer Rachel Weisz thinks a bit differently about it. As she says to Autostraddle, “for Esti it’s also about her liberation. It’s her true self….They’re stuck in this world of patriarchal oppression and suddenly they’re alone and finally free to love each other.” It’s about autonomy and agency. They’re not lost; they’re free. But as (sadly) groundbreaking as the six minute sex scene is, it only happens after three shorter heterosexual ones. The narrative purpose of this is clear enough — Esti and Ronit’s relationship is only exceptional if there is something to compare it to; however, to put it bluntly — what a drag. There’s enough unexciting straight sex in this world. There’s no need for any more of it.

Unfortunately, having gay stories on the big screen at all is still an accomplishment, and consequently, Disobedience is exceptional just by being extant. It’s certainly not ideal that queer stories are almost exclusively present through the means of those who don’t belong to the community, but at least they exist, and at least this one features Oscar-winning and nominated actresses. But it should in no way be too much to ask that the people to whom these stories belong are the ones who get to share them. Generally, LGBTQ+ lives are only allowed in mainstream film when they are presented and packaged by (usually white) cishet people. When we try to tell our own stories, it‘s “too risky”. Which is a shame, because had this film involved gay women in its creative team, it likely would have been elevated from acceptable to excellent.

Like many of its predecessors, Disobedience is a hopeful tragedy. Any love and joy that Ronit and Esti create for themselves create pain and turmoil in their wakes. Their relationship only comes at the cost of another, and everyone around them would be happier if they were not together. It is a queer film that holds the same bitterness as most others. But despite all of the tropes and angst, you should still see it. It was visually beautiful and ultimately told an important story. And maybe if we give enough queer movies our money, they’ll finally let us make one for ourselves.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None
Queer Director: No
Queer Writer: No
Queer Actor(s): No

This is part five of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always. | Last Week’s Movie: Room In Rome

Week 5: Princess Cyd, 2017. Dir. Stephen Cone.

Netflix Synopsis: A teenager moves to Chicago for the summer and finds a poignant mentor in her aunt and a sweet love interest in a girl who works in the neighborhood.

It’s unclear where to start when talking about Princess Cyd. Writer and director Steven Cone’s film is at times completely enrapturing and at others lackluster. It both leans on stereotypes and boldly balks against them. It is entirely predictable yet quite unexpected.

Cyd follows teenager Cydney from North Carolina to her aunt’s home in Chicago for the summer. Suggested by her dad, the trip is an opportunity to broaden her horizons and get time away from her depressing single parent household. Her aunt Miranda still lives in her own childhood home, and it will be nice for Cyd to see where her mom grew up.

Princess Cyd is almost the antithesis of melodrama. It puts together a string of fragments and snapshots of the titular character’s summer with the seemingly desired effect of a quasi-cinéma vérité. There isn’t any grand excitement until suddenly there is; every moment is trying to be lived, not made. And for the most part it does feel like you’re watching someone’s life, albeit one that’s a little too perfect. Cyd makes mistakes, and conflicts do exist, but they’re too exacted to feel genuine. Nothing is actually messy enough to resonate fully, and the mess that does exist feels intentional and chosen.

The film’s insistence on being real is its biggest asset and also its biggest flaw. There is an artificial authenticity that bleeds throughout the scenes — a diluted version of reality that leaves something to be desired. Cyd’s love interest Katie is a barista at the local coffee shop who says things like, “You play soccer? That’s hot,” and who invites Cyd into her room within an hour of meeting her and begins to undress, telling her, “Don’t look! Just kidding. You can look if you want to”. It’s surprising that she didn’t wink as she said it.

Cyd tackles big topics in its 96 minutes: religion, sex, death, love, but it only touches on them. Cyd asks Miranda, a novelist whose work focuses on religious themes, if she thinks they’ll really see her mom again. She asks Miranda about her desire to have sex with Katie, how to do it right, and what Miranda thinks of sex. Miranda has a friendship with a male coworker/mentee that feels as though it might lead somewhere. It never does, which is pretty much a recurring feeling of the entire movie. Cyd frequently inches you to the top of the rollercoaster without ever letting you reach the apex of the experience. It has the potential to be wonderful. It isn’t quite.

In short, Princess Cyd is a pleasant film. It is a queer coming of age story that does not belabor the coming out of it all. It features a female lead who is comfortable in — if not brazen about — herself and her desires. It proudly explores female sexuality and experimentation. There is ultimately very little tangible conflict present in this film, which can leave it feeling flat. But when almost every other queer story has its fair share of turmoil and angst, I suppose uneventful isn’t quite a bad thing.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None
Queer Director: Yes
Queer Writer: Yes
Queer Actor(s): Yes

Watch Princess Cyd
Next week’s movie: Kiss Me (Kyss Mig)

This is part four of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always. | Last Week’s Movie: A Perfect Ending

Week 4: Room In Rome, 2010. Dir. Julio Medem.

Netflix Synopsis: Two women meet and experience sensual and emotional fulfillment during a steamy encounter in a hotel room where they share secrets as well as sex.

Where does one start when reviewing Room In Rome? There is almost too much to unpack. Shall we start with the reliance on the trope of homosexual experimentation? Using adultery as a plot device? The child molestation backstory? The miscarriage one? Oh, the embarrassment of riches is overwhelming.

Let’s start with the fact that Room In Rome, the story of two women who meet and fall in love — or at least lust, was written and directed by a straight man. Julio Medem clearly built this movie on what is likely nothing more than fantasy and conjecture. I mean, there is a pillow fight! And while one of the actors does identify as a part of the LGBT community, that hardly takes the sting out of the heteronormative male gaze under which these characters’ experience exist.

Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) meet at a bar on their last night in Rome. Natasha is flying back to Moscow the next day; Alba is leaving for Spain. Alba seduces Natasha to come up to her hotel room with pick up lines so aggressive and dull it’s astounding that they work. Alba grabs Natasha’s hand, and like clockwork, Natasha discloses that she’s “never gone up to a woman’s room before”. Color me shocked.

It’s difficult to critique the writing of this movie. Not because it is that good, but because it is almost exclusively in English, a language that neither of the two protagonists nor the screenwriter speak natively. In that respect, it makes sense that the dialogue feels awkward and stunted — of course the word choice and rhythm of a secondary or tertiary language will not be the same as those of a mother tongue; however, despite these very legitimate reasons, the clunkiness of the writing firmly takes a native English speaker out of the story.

Although, it’s not that hard to be taken out of the story because there isn’t much story present in Room In Rome. The greatest personal obstacle that the two women must overcome is learning to put their robes on when they open the hotel room door. (It happens, like, four times. Put a robe on!) There is more backstory than actual plot, but in Alba and Natasha’s attempts to remain coy, it’s unclear if that backstory is actually true: Natasha’s name is maybe Dasha, and she is maybe an actor and maybe a tennis player, and she maybe was a history major and maybe lives on an island; Alba is maybe not her real name, and she and/or her mother were maybe sold to a Saudi prince, and she maybe had a miscarriage and maybe has a dead stepson. The only definite personal information about either character is that they are both cheating on long term serious partners. How fun.

Rome attempts to use its setting as a character. With frequent inserts of the paintings that adorn the walls of the hotel room and mentions of the history that the ancient city holds, Medem tries hard to draw parallels between the inherent passion of Rome and the mutual infatuation of the two women. Natasha exclaims, “We’re surrounded by history! Can you feel it?” Not really, because the camera never looks further than immediately outside the hotel room window. And any wonder they have about Rome is quickly absorbed by a five minute sequence in which the two look up each other’s houses on Google Maps. Which they do naked. Consequently, we’re left to take the women’s word on how rich Rome is. And their word has not been very good.

In short, Room In Rome does not accomplish any of what it set out to do. It does not tell a realistic story of two women falling in love. Its writing is nonsense both in terms of the LGBT tropes it uses and the straight male gaze it is born from. What is supposed to be an intimate story is actually generic and impersonal, which is impressive given that it features so much physical intimacy. It ultimately betrays its own title by utterly failing to capture the romance and magic that a room in the heart of Rome should elicit. Room In Rome asks you believe that the experience Alba and Natasha share is idyllic, but ultimately all it feels like is a fever dream.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None
Queer Director: No
Queer Writer: No
Queer Actor(s): Yes

Watch Room In Rome
Next week’s movie: Princess Cyd

This is part three of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always. | Last Week’s Movie: Below Her Mouth

Week 3: A Perfect Ending, 2012. Dir. Nicole Conn.

Netflix Synopsis: After confessing an unusual secret, a repressed wife — prompted by her friends — decides to explore her sexuality with a high-priced call girl.

The first shot of A Perfect Ending is out of focus and not visually appealing. It is a small, blue blur in the corner of the frame, and only after a few more shots of a few more blurs does it become clear that it’s a blot of ink. It is unclear why this opens the film, as the shots that follow are close-up inserts of fences, statues, and fountains that rack focus from one seemingly insignificant part of each structure to another. The images don’t appear to relate, and the same goes for the weirdly haunting piano music that underscores the montage. Why is that there? Why did they make that choice? You will ask yourself both of these questions over and over during the two hours of your life that this movie takes up.

Written and directed by Nicole Conn, A Perfect Ending is the opposite of perfect. It is so profoundly flawed that it’s barely coherent, and it is confounding and sad that a queer woman is responsible for this movie. Why, you ask? Let me count the ways.

The first line belongs to a man. The first person we see is a man. The first three sex scenes are heterosexual. The supporting female characters have as much development and backstory as the string cheese I ate last week. The gay people don’t have a happy ending. I could go on, but I should maintain at least some element of mystery to the movie lest you are of the masochistic sort and feel the need to watch it.

Though it takes about twenty minutes to learn this, A Perfect Ending is about a wealthy blonde woman (Barbara Niven) who is unhappy in her marriage to businessman Mason. She has never had an orgasm, and with the help of her lesbian friends, she hires a call girl (Jessica Clark) to help her in her quest to know “what passion is” and “what an orgasm feels like.” After three failed endeavors to reach these goals, call girl Paris finally kisses her. They have sex. We learn that Wealthy Blonde Woman’s name is Rebecca. And only because Paris shouldn’t call her “Mrs. White.”

Yes, it took twenty-seven minutes to learn the protagonist’s name. Yes, we learned her husband and children’s names well before hers. But, given that it takes until about midway through act two for any real plot to occur, I suppose a half hour isn’t that long of a wait. Not shortly after both protagonists are identified, they fall in love, one of them dies, and one of them paints a terrible commemorative painting of the other entitled “Le Petit Mort.” Get it? Anyway, while all this is happening, the husband continues to be an alcoholic and maybe a sexual predator, the son gets engaged to a cartoon of a woman, and Paris is really artistically stuck because, we learn through flashbacks, she accidentally killed her boyfriend some time ago. That’s really psychologically taxing, guys!

The stories in A Perfect Ending are as unconnected and illogical as its creative choices. Every transition between scenes is either a sitcom-style fade out or a series of extreme close-ups on inanimate objects that are in the upcoming scene. Some are so close up that it takes a moment to realize what they are; there’s one that is still a bit unclear, even after rewinding three times. The often bizarre editing includes jump cuts that give the impression of a blooper reel more than a serious film. But the worst is the score. There is rarely a moment without music, and there is rarely a moment that the music feels appropriate. What sounds like horror movie music, utterly incongruous with the lighting and directing, underscores most of the scenes.

The most realistic part of this movie is that the straight woman has never had an orgasm, and the lesbians teach her how to have one. That shred of realism is quickly lost when she actually has the orgasm, which is so prolonged it is… let’s call it cinematic. Although, in the movie’s defense, if you hadn’t had an orgasm in 50–60 years, your first one would probably leave you feeling pretty dramatic, too.

A Perfect Ending is not a good movie. It regurgitates the same LGBT tropes that have existed in film for decades, only it does so badly. The only good part about it is Morgan Fairchild, but her character is terribly written and uses actual barbie dolls to represent human call girls. The husband also at one point calls a Korean man a ch*nk. That’s not related to Morgan Fairchild or the majority of the movie. I just needed to make sure you all know.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: Yes
Queer Director: Yes
Queer Writer: Yes
Queer Actor(s):Yes

Watch A Perfect Ending
Next week’s movie: Room In Rome

This is part two of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always. | Last week’s movie: Almost Adults

Week 2: Below Her Mouth, 2017. Dir. April Mullen.

Netflix Synopsis: An engaged fashion editor begins a torrid affair with a female roofer that threatens to turn both of their lives upside down.

If there is one thing you should know about Below Her Mouth before you watch it, it’s that it was made by an entirely female crew. Every crew member, from writer Stephanie Fabrizi and director April Mullen to boom operator and production assistant, was female-identifying.

By this metric alone, Below Her Mouth is outstanding.

It is also outstanding in its portrayal of female sexuality in a carnal and frank way that most other films do not and will not attempt. The poster proudly quotes Shedoesthecity’s claim that Below Her Mouth is “the cinematic voice to the female orgasm.” While it’s debatable whether or not it’s the cinematic voice for the oh-so-rare and ever-elusive female orgasm, it certainly is up there.

This movie includes at least four sex scenes. There are at least two other almost-sex scenes. Sex is so integral to this film that the opening shot is during the first of these scenes. The camera is close on roofer Dallas’ unaffected face (Erika Linder) as she is on top of then-girlfriend Joslyn, because of course her name is Dallas, of course she’s a roofer, and of course she’s on top. The close up moves to Joslyn as she has the first Female Orgasm of the movie. The frame widens. Dallas rolls off her and announces she’s moving out.

The next day, Dallas goes to work on a roof next to the apartment of fashion editor Jasmine (Natalie Krill). They lock eyes. It’s only later at a lesbian bar that she actually meets Jasmine — who is engaged to a man and only there because her friend thought it would be “fun” — and pursues her with a determination that borders on harassment. And then, despite Jasmine’s engagement, the two are making out by minute 20.

Speaking of her engagement, fiancé Rile is so firmly a tertiary character that he only pops up a handful of times. And, despite all of the sex and nudity in the film, his penis only appears once. And when it does, it doesn’t even engage in any sexual activity. Can you even believe it? I can’t. And neither can he. But life must go on, and off on a work trip he goes, leaving Jasmine home alone.

You can pretty much guess how it goes from there.

Actually, you know how it goes from there, because you’ve seen it already. The biggest plot points and twists are ones that have already occurred in other films and shows: The L Word (Jenny Schecter’s season one plot), Fun Home (“Changing My Major”), and every other LGBT movie you’ve ever watched. Recognizable lines include, but are not limited to, “I’ve never done anything like this before,” “I’m memorizing every part of you,” and “Are you a lesbian?” Because what’s a queer film without some good old-fashioned bi-erasure? As soon as you learn that the two main characters are a charming lesbian and an engaged straight girl, you can fill in the blanks yourself. (Caveat: Jasmine does state briefly that she had a girlfriend in high school, though she never self-identifies as anything. It feels like bi-erasure more than anything else, and in the context of the rest of the film, the admission is almost insignificant. It is such a fleeting conversation that it comes across as gratuitous in order to avoid the trope of “turning” her.)

Those behind the project are adamant that the movie is not porn. It is art; it is a narrative; it is a film with full nudity. That can be true if you want it to be. However, just like Dallas, it has “no emotional stamina for intimacy” outside of sex. Whatever attempts it makes at story feel anemic, and the effort that went into visual richness did not carry over to the page. The cinematography is beautiful and at times arresting, but it does more for the story than the actual text does. The way the sex scenes are shot will speak to the psychology of the characters more than the actual characters themselves will. Like in porn, the plot is weak at best and contrived at worst. And even though Krill and Linder pour passion into all facets of their performances, it’s still not quite enough to make up for what the script lacks.

Below Her Mouth accomplishes Mullen’s goal of telling a “true, honest female perspective of what it’s like to fall in love.” That is, of course, if you identify with either Jasmine or Dallas. If you don’t, it’s just a film about two attractive women having a lot of sex with each other, which is nothing to be sad about. Maybe just don’t watch it with your mother.

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None
Queer Director: Yes
Queer Writer: Yes
Queer Actor(s): Yes

Watch Below Her Mouth
Next week’s movie: A Perfect Ending

This is part one of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always.

Week 1: Almost Adults, 2016. Dir. Sarah Rotella.

Netflix Synopsis: Two best friends start to grow apart as they reach maturity and must come to terms with changes in their relationship and their individual sexuality.

Directed by Sarah Rotella and written by Adrianna DiLonardo, both of the YouTube channel UnsolicitedProject, Almost Adults is very much what its synopsis belies. It is a movie about female friendship. It is a movie about an individual’s sexuality. And, as a fan of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire web-series starring Adults’ Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman, I was very excited to watch it. However, if you‘ve never seen Carmilla and don’t watch anything from UnsolicitedProject, you likely won’t feel as invested in these characters as the film wishes you would.

Almost Adults follows the lives of friends and roommates Cassie (Negovanlis) and Mackenzie/”Mack” (Bauman) somewhere in their last year of college. The movie opens with a shot of the two in bed together, Cassie having come in sometime during the night “for the cuddles.” While still in bed, they bicker about breakfast — Cassie will make them blueberry pancakes, but only on the promise that Mack “won’t ever leave” her, because now her boyfriend Matthew is gone and she’s all alone. We never see the pancakes of note, but we are treated to a montage of the two young women sipping soda out of the same bottle, pulling rogue eyelashes off of each other, and play tackling while a very sweet song with the lyrics, “I’m already one of the few who gets you,” and, “Maybe we’re the only ones” plays. It’s all very queer.

Except for that it’s not. Only Mack is gay, as we discover quickly thereafter in a dinner conversation with her parents. Meanwhile, Cassie is at a different restaurant ensuring her parents that she is not a lesbian, so no, that is not why she broke up with Matthew.

One set of parents is happy. The other is devastated. It is not the one you think.

Mack’s parents are supportive and unsurprised to hear that their daughter likes women. Strangely, she is upset about this. They don’t have the “right” reaction — the one that involves tears and disownment — and therefore they’ve ruined the experience for her. She only gets to come out to her parents once, and no drama ensues because of it? “How fucked up is that?”

But have no fear. Mack gets the reaction she’s always wanted when Cassie finds out from a coworker instead of Mack herself. Cassie is furious, even after Mack points out that the reason her friend was the last to know is because her opinion mattered most. The rest of the movie is about Cassie letting go of her anger, and despite this being the core of the film, it’s the least interesting part of it.

However, as annoying and self-involved as Cassie’s response is, it is important to note that the conflict of the film is not Mack’s coming out itself. Instead, the conflict resides in the emotional and interpersonal ramifications that the characters face after the fact. And though it is irritating that this conflict rests so much on Cassie making it all about herself, there is no demonization or catastrophizing of homosexuality. Mack experiences rough waters within her friendship, but nothing else. There are a lot of LGBT films that cannot say the same, so kudos to DiLonardo for that.

Almost Adults was written and directed by gay women, so clearly there is authenticity and real life experience behind its story. This lends it legitimacy, but also raises expectations. Despite the queer creators, something about the depiction of Mack’s experience falls flat. Rotella and DiLonardo can’t decide on a tone for the film, which leaves you unsure of how to react to it. Perhaps this confusion is due to the frequent fallback on stereotypes — gay friend Levi is full of quips about gayness and admonishes Mack for not being able to tell the difference between two seemingly identical shirts (so funny, right?). Maybe it’s that the dialogue feels a little too contrived — “Newsflash! They don’t care about you like I do!” Regardless, clichés are abundant in this film, and none of them land strongly enough to come across as satire. It’s likely that most of it is meant to be an inside joke to all of the lesbians — myself included — who have done the same things as Mack, but because the film doesn’t know what it wants to be, the stereotypes feel more lazy than self aware.

Almost Adults is almost the movie you want. It’s heartening to have women as both #1 and #2 on the call sheet, and it’s refreshing to have a film about platonic female friendship — especially when one of the women is queer. The importance of having a story about a queer woman coming from the minds and mouths of queer women is profound. It is for these reasons that I would recommend Almost Adults. It’s a fine movie and you will enjoy it enough, but it is both Rotella and DiLonardo’s first feature film, and it feels like it. The script could benefit from some re-working, and the story is more or less predictable — I became more interested in watching the general depiction of gay women in everyday life than in the characters themselves. But, it is shot nicely and has a happy ending. So, if you’re in the mood for a movie that’s both pretty and pretty gay, go for it.

Plus, even if you hate it, you’ll at least have gotten to watch Elise Bauman make out with some girls. And what’s not to love about that?

FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None!
Queer Director: Yes
Queer Writer: Yes
Queer Actor(s): Yes

Watch Almost Adults
Next week’s movie: Below Her Mouth

I’ve been across the river before, with ice cream dripping down my chin and with sandaled feet crossed on a park bench. I’ve watched the children play in the water, splashing with invulnerable serenity. I’ve traveled there before, sluicing through the current with a steady rhythm, the oars leaving the water each stroke with a plop that sounds almost like mirth. “I see land!” I’d exult, a chuckle leaving my throat as the children grew closer.

There is a footbridge you can take to get there if you want. I can’t. Not yet, at least. But you can, probably. Tell me about it when we meet by the lilies, okay? Could you wait for me there?

For me to get there, I must row. It is difficult, but I have done it before. Climb in your boat, secure your feet, one hand on each oar. Keep your eyes on your destination and don’t look back. Breathe with each move you make. Keep a steady pace. You will get there soon.

But now I can’t seem to find my boat.

And I was never very good at swimming.

+

It rains a lot here, but I’ve gotten wet before. It’s nothing that I can’t handle. Although now my boots have holes in them and the roof has sprung a leak, I’ll get some tape and find a bucket. Each water droplet will fall into it with a plop that sounds almost like purpose.

The trees on this side have no leaves. Their branches are bare with what must be sorrow, but I’ve learned to see the beauty. It’s calming, how strong they seem.

I’ve been here before. More times than across the river. Its familiarity is haunting and it mocks me. But “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t,” they say. Well, I know this devil. So here I am.

My boat is broken, anyway.

+

I find a puzzle piece. It’s a corner one. One of the ones you start with, that you could do with your eyes closed, that makes you forget about the middle piece you’re sure will be missing later. The one that makes you forget that you haven’t begun the hard work yet.

Still, I place it on the corner of the table firmly, with a glint in my eye.

A drop of water plops into the bucket. Children laugh across the river.

I look for the next one.

+

Sadness has burrowed and seeped inside, but it is not what I am made of. I am made of fervor and of feeling. I am made of my mother, and her mother, and many mothers before. I am made of the Earth. I am built of both here and there and everywhere in between.

I have spent more time lately with my rain boots and buckets than I have with sun-kissed cheeks and flowing hair. But I have been in the water enough times to know. I have held the oars in my hands so many times that I have gotten blisters, yet I have felt no regret at the stinging. Even with bloodied hands I know that the sun is always shining fiercely and flowers bloom with purpose. I know that snow falls as paint does to a canvas, that the wind chills to tell you of a renaissance yet to come. I know that your life is in unparalleled motion.

My calluses have taught me that capsizing does not mean drowning. That you haven’t yet gotten what you want because it is being saved for when you need it most. I have learned that your joys might be latent, but still they are extant, growing and waiting to burst forth and consume you.

I have learned that I will sit under a painted blue sky.

I will be bathed in sun.