1. Muriel's Wedding: outcast and loser Muriel meets bad-ass hip high school friend on vacation...they perform ABBA karaoke and move in together. Muriel, who has clearly been brainwashed into heteronormativity, still dreams of a white wedding and ends up marrying an athlete who is using her to get citizenship. Not to give away the ending, but it's the two girls who drive off together, which segues nicely into...
2. Thelma and Louise: is there really any explanation needed? Susan Sarandon said in The Celluloid Closet that their meaningful glance/hand-grasp immediate pre-cliff-leap should have been, or at least symbolized, a kiss.
3. Gold Diggers: random 90's family movie with lil' lezzies in the making! New good girl in town (Christina Ricci) meets "tomboy" and outcast played by that girl from My Girl. They go on adventures that turn almost life-threatening, and end up happily ever after, and rich!
4. The Children's Hour: two women (Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine) who run a small private school are accused of "indecent acts." It's crazy that words like 'lesbian' or 'homosexuality' are never mentioned, but for its time it was...quite something. Apparently, the actresses didn't even discuss the lesbian nature of the plot off-screen.
5. Fried Green Tomatoes: I actually kind of hate this movie (the train scene scarred me for life as a child) but how did they NOT hook up?
Others of note, which I leave to your interpretation: A League of Their Own, Terms of Endearment, Thirteen and Welcome to the Dollhouse.
I agree with yer claims here, and must also add a trumpet of discontent about tina fey's decisions around lesbianism in mean girls...the ways in which lesbians are spoken about & actively not spoken about create a really strange chord of tension throughout the entire film. especially how janis ends up with the mathlete emcee in the end---as if that makes any sense! it's like shakespeare's twelfth night, where everyone has to get married at the end to make sure in the course of all the cross-dressing & gender-twisting plotlines, nobody forgot to pledge allegiance to the flag of heteronormativity...
ReplyDeleteAlso, do not forget The Color Purple!
ReplyDeleteIn the novel, Celie and Shug have what is indisputably an open lesbian partnership. However, Stephen Spielberg did not think mainstream audiences in 1982 (is that the correct year?) were ready for openly lesbian Black female characters. So there is only one ambiguous kiss b/w the two wumyn...and the rest is omitted or underplayed.
But this is SUCH a lesbian movie, without question!
I'll definitely give you thirteen, and a league of their own. Haven't seen the others.
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