Movies

10 feel-good lesbian movies to get you through the summer

As July suddenly marches into our lives and Pride Month fades away, there are, disappointingly, less events for wearing rainbow boas and sparkly attire, and more back-to-regular life doldrums. Yet there’s always another option left to help us still feel happy and gay. And for this option, we can wear pajamas and order pizza! Or heck, you could still wear your rainbow boas and sparkly attire, if you want!

This option, of course, is to sit back and watch a good movie.

I saw quite a few lists produced last month of Great Queer Movies to Watch for Pride. But these lists included all queer movies of all time, and while I tend to lean towards the Horrible and Depressing most of the time, for once I wanted a list of just The Happy Ones. The ones that gave me gay warm fuzzies and affirmed my belief in love, as opposed to emotional trauma caused by suicide and scary child murder and rape and heartbreak and sleeping with dudes and falling in love with straight people! Y’know?

Thankfully, these Happy Ones do indeed exist, and I spent my month watching and re-watching some of the best ones. Although I’m sure I’m missing some, here’s my Top Ten, in no particular order:

From the first scene of our protagonist Megan exaggeratedly making out with her boyfriend while she pictures the bouncing boobs of her fellow cheerleaders, to her final adorable, earnest cheer for her girl Graham, this move is absolutely, delightfully, 100% gay camp. This movie takes the horrifying idea of programs that aim to turn people straight and makes it genuinely funny and charming and empowering all at once. I had also forgotten until my recent re-watch how much Clea DuVall really sets my loins on fire throughout the whole thing. Plus, RuPaul is in it. I mean, it’s perfect.

Before Sweden gave us Kyss Mig, there was Show Me Love, originally titled F–king Amal in Sweden. (Imagine the horror of keeping an original title with a curse word in it! Gasp, we would never.) To my knowledge, there still hasn’t been a film since that portrays young lesbian love so positively and genuinely as Show Me Love. Not only does it explore Baby Lesbian Feelings, but both of the main characters, Agnes and Elin, brilliantly express different types of teen angst: Agnes the angst of being unpopular and lonely, Elin the angst of being popular and bored with everyone and everything around her. Also, the last scene of this movie is one of the most amazing last scenes of a movie ever. I laughed and clapped once it was over. I want to hug this movie and never let it go.

What I love about this movie is all the different types of love it celebrates. Multiple storylines criss-cross throughout Saving Face, and only one is really gay: that of Chinese-American surgeon Wil and her romance with the professional dancer Vivian. Wil and Vivian’s quiet dynamic is wonderful and sexy, with Wil being hesitant and private while Vivian is full of sass and assurance. Plus, Vivian is all, “I’ve loved you forever, Wil – I think I was 12.” Okay, she doesn’t say that, but it’s pretty much the same. The main storyline, however, really has to do with Wil’s mother, who is shunned from the Chinese-American community in Flushing, New York for being unwed and pregnant. She consequently moves in with Wil, an adjustment for both of them. And while she has a hard time accepting Wil’s lesbianism at first, there are commonalities in their shared experiences of rejecting what society expects of them, having to hide these rebellions, and then finally rejoicing in the joy that can come with accepting what they really want.

Set in Reno in 1959, Desert Hearts tells the tale of Vivian Bell, a highbrow, high strung professor of English Literature from New York City. Somehow, her impending divorce has brought her to Reno, where she has to wait out some paperwork and take a break from her life. Lucky for her, she happens to stay at a ranch full of ladies – already a win-win situation – one of whom, shockingly, is a huge dyke. She’s also out, a somewhat big deal in Reno in 1959. The building of Vivian’s relationship with Cay until they finally get it on is wonderfully acted and written, and is backed up by an amazing soundtrack full of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline. Basically, it is a lesbian Western dream.

Do you like cultural diversity? Do you like hot sex between hot women? Well, then! Here is a movie for you! Written and directed by Shamim Sharif, it stars Lisa Ray as Tala, a Jordanian about to be married until she meets Leyla, played by Sheetal Sheth, a British Indian who wants to be a writer. While they both face personal, cultural, and familial obstacles in pursuing their relationship, they press forward because, look, did I mention they’re both really hot? And that they have hot sex? Who wouldn’t press forward? A really satisfying watch.

Piper Perabo. Lena Headey. Adorableness everywhere. That is all you need to know. Rachel and Luce standing on cars in the middle of traffic declaring their love for each other is our John Cusack holding a boombox over his head.

I have a hunch there are people who might protest the inclusion of Kissing Jessica Stein. Without spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it, I’ll just say that this one doesn’t end exactly the way all the other ones on this list generally end. That said, at least in my opinion, that doesn’t mean the ending was bad. In fact, I think this whole movie is a really honest, really true, important – and happy! – exploration of sexuality. And Jessica’s mother’s speech to her in the yard during her brother’s wedding is perfect: “And maybe, just maybe, it would have been the best ever. You never know.” Plus, it was written and co-produced by the two stars, Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen, which is rad. And while it was technically released in the 2000s, it has that romantic-comedy-set-in-New-York-City-in-the-1990s vibe to it (Jessica’s red spiral staircase in her apartment! Ahhh!), and I would live in that particular vibe at all times if I could.

If you ever find yourself feeling worn down by The Man or hostile straight people in your world, and you just really need to indulge in completely stereotypical lesbo-isms, you’re due for a viewing of the Canadian Better Than Chocolate. There’s a gay bookstore! A van with a naked lady painted on the side! Body painting! Lots of sex! Transexuals! And lots of folky female singer-songwriters singing in the background!

Documenting the drag ball scene of New York City in the 1980s that created voguing before Madonna spread it to the entire world, I’m breaking a few of my own rules with this documentary, but I have reasons. The rules it breaks: It’s not strictly about lesbians. The ending includes a really awful tragedy. And so much of the film is rooted in pain and discrimination. But here’s why I’m including it: Out of the pain and discrimination, there is joy. What I find so inspiring in this film is the astounding sense of community and family it shows. The amazing individuals interviewed here have literally created their own families, which they call houses, after being rejected from their original ones. The love from a house mother is as real as any biological mother love. Since Pride to me is all about community, this will always be my #1 Pride film. And importantly, what this film also actually truly discusses best isn’t just sexuality and gender (although gender is in fact much more the focus than sexuality), but how both poverty and race play into all of it – two issues that affect the queer world so much that still aren’t talked about enough. Every time I watch this, and I have watched it a lot, I like it more. It’s not just my favorite documentary, it’s one of my favorite films, period. Maybe this seems like a strange choice. You may have never heard of it. It’s extremely hard to find a good copy of, although thankfully, decent clips are available on YouTube. But this deserves a place on this list because it was one of, if not the, first lesbian movie with a happy ending. And it’s from 1931! From Germany right before World War II! The history of this movie is absolutely fascinating. Taking place in a harsh boarding school, it deals with the obsessive love a student, Manuela, feels for one of her teachers, Fraulein von Bernburg, feelings that are obviously reciprocated from sexy, compassionate Bernburg. This isn’t just lesbian subtext here – the glances and the touches this young woman and her teacher exchange are some of the most sensual things I’ve ever seen on film. (There was apparently a re-make done in Germany after the war, but I heard the sensual times were played way down. So if you’re not watching it in black and white, you’re not watching the right one.) It also rails against the fascism and oppression that is so often the norm in education and society at large when it comes to children. Essentially, it apparently offended the Nazis on multiple levels. It was banned in both Germany and the United States until Eleanor Roosevelt, the best woman we’ve ever had on our side in the White House, helped lift the ban in the US. The New York Times then went on to name it the best film of the year.

This film can so easily be compared to one that came out in the US 30 years later, the star-studded The Children’s Hour with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. (Spoilers ahead!) While the lesbianism in the Children’s Hour occurs between two teachers as opposed to a teacher and a student, both take place at boarding schools in a earlier era. The lesbianism is eventually found out and perceived as a dangerous threat in both movies. Yet how they’re dealt with is vastly different. The Children’s Hour ends in suicide and isolation. Yet in Madchen in Uniform, while Manuela literally faces the same decision MacLaine did, in the end the entire school rallies around her and saves her. Leaves one with a bit of a different sensation about the consequences of being gay, doesn’t it?

With the tumult of the war, it’s amazing that this film has survived at all. But there are still bits which never made it past the Nazis and the censors, which are lost to time forever. Imagine the touching and glances we’re missing!

What did I miss? What are your favorite happy movies that help give you pride throughout the year?

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