In
the 1931 lesbian movie Maedchen
in Uniform, a young girl is sent off to a boarding
school for girls, where she soon develops a massive crush on
everyone’s favorite female teacher. The attraction is
shared, but external pressure and mandatory self-restraint conspire
to head off an outright affair between the two.
This
now-classic tale of forbidden love is about to get
a modern retelling in the upcoming film, Loving Annabelle.
In
2005, social disdain for inter-generational love persists, perhaps
no less firmly than it did pre-World War II. The endurance of
this taboo is what sparked 28-year-old director Katherine Brooks
to tell an updated story of student-teacher love. She was inspired
to write the script after seeing Maedchen in Uniform
for the first time eight years ago.
“I
was impressed with the layers and depth a film of that time
had and how they dealt with such a controversial issue,”
Brooks told AfterEllen.com. “I loved the idea that something
that was so taboo in the ’30s is also still taboo today.”
Watching Maedchen, Brooks recently told Filmmaker
magazine, made her wonder “why it’s so taboo for
an adult to experience a relationship with a 17-year-old,”
adding that she wanted to “explore the human side of an
adult drawn to a relationship with a minor and to get people
to see what the two struggle against to be together.”
Brooks
set out to explore the intricacies of a modern-day affair between
a teacher and student, which she says fascinates her because
there is so much complexity to the union.
“It’s sensitive subject matter,” she acknowledges,
“but that means little to me. What’s important is
telling a real story of two women who defy all obstacles to
be together.”
While
Maedchen in Uniform deals with unrequited mutual pining,
Brooks’s film will delve into deeper terrain, exploring
the sexual and emotional relationship between the teacher and
student. What
is only a schoolgirl crush in Maedchen morphs into
a full-bodied affair in Loving Annabelle, which is
set in an all-girls’ Catholic boarding school in present-day
Northern California.
According
to a press packet for the film, the school is isolated
from the outside world and “prides itself in bringing
up only the finest girls.” It is run by Mother Emaculata,
the strict headmistress, and nothing evades her watchful eye
or disrupts the rigid environment she delights in maintaining.
The
film’s lead characters are 15 years apart in age.
17-year-old
Annabelle will be played by Erin Kelly (who starred in Brooks’s
short film titled Finding Kate), and her 32-year-old
teacher, Simone, will be played by Diane Gaidry (The Dogwalker).
Annabelle
is described as “a rebel who refuses to accept the school's
rules and discipline… the daughter of a famous senator
who garners attention and finds trouble wherever she goes.”
Simone,
the young poetry teacher who falls in love with Annabelle is
“devoted to the school and her students” and “immerses
herself in a world with little conflict” until Annabelle
comes along. When they first meet, Simone dismisses her as a
troublemaker, “only later to discover Annabelle is the
one that unlocks the intensity and passion Simone has been missing...Blinded
to the world around them, the two women journey into a love
affair destined to shatter all that Simone has worked for and
believes in.”
The
cast also includes former Trump spouse Marla Maples (Happiness),
Michelle Horn (Strong Medicine), Markus Flanagan (Melrose
Place), Laura Breckenridge (staring in a new WB show, Related),
Golden Globe winner/Academy Award nominee Kevin McCarthy (Invasion
of the Body Snatchers), and Ilene Graff (Ladybugs)
as the disapproving Mother Emaculata.
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