Made
for only $350,000 in 1985 when no
one wanted to fund or star in a movie about lesbians,
Desert Hearts is widely considered the first
full-length lesbian love story, and its success
paved the way for the proliferation of lesbian films we enjoy
today.
Directed
by Donna Deitch and set in 1950's Reno, Nevada, Desert Hearts
tells the story of a 35-year-old uptight female professor
Vivian (Helen Shaver) who comes to town to file for divorce
and ends up falling in love with a free-spirited 25-year-old
casino worker Cay (Patricia Charbonneau).
Although
Vivian left her husband because she had "drowned in still
waters," she is not quite prepared for the tidal wave-effect
Cay has on her life. As Vivian herself admits, her life is all
about "order," and her image of herself as a scholar
and a professional, upstanding woman does not include a relationship
with a woman. Cay, meanwhile, is living at home with her stepmother,
Frances (Audra Lindley) while she waits to meet someone who
"counts"--and she almost immediately recognizes that
Vivian is that someone.
Both
women struggle with conflicting desires and a sense of obligation
to others, and are ultimately drawn together not just because
of their attraction to each other, but because each woman offers
the other something she has been unable to find on her own.
Shaver
is excellent as the tense, repressed Vivian trying
to come to terms with her attraction to Cay and all that it
implies, and Charbonneau's Cay is magnetic, fairly leaping off
the screen in places (especially impressive considering this
was Charbonneau's first role). The chemistry between Cay and
Vivian builds slowly but powerfully, and the ending is satisfying
without being unrealistic.
Lindley as Cay's stepmother is also superb as a lonely woman
caught between wanting her step-daughter to be happy, and being
afraid to lose her.
The
film moves at a slow but steady pace and its frequent reliance
on silence to communicate more than words is
a welcome contrast to the tendency of most movies today to rush
to fill every moment with sound of some sort. Desert Hearts
does include music from classic singers like Patsy Cline that
wonderfully reinforce the feel of the film, but it uses them
judiciously, as enhancement instead of filler.
"Sparing"
is perhaps the word that best describes
the film overall, because when the characters speak, we listen.
The dialogue is clunky and corny in some places--exemplified
by the line "she just reached in and put a string of lights
around my heart"--but in other places it resonates strongly,
such as when Cay explains her brief fling with her (male) boss
at the Casino with the comment, "I allowed myself to get
attracted to his attraction to me."
Even
the occasional insults are brilliantly understated, as in this
exchange between Vivian and another guest at the ranch:
