Movies

The Top 11 Cinematic Lesbian “Reveals”

Lesbian moviegoers are experts in the field of subtext deconstruction.

During a movie’s high-speed car chase, you might whisper to your best friend, Did you see the way the lead female character touched her female friend’s shoulder for one-quarter of one nanosecond longer than was absolutely necessary? It probably means those two are in big gay love!

Or you nudge your girlfriend to make sure she noticed the bridesmaid’s furtive look as her best friend walks down the aisle in a wedding gown.

Most of these subtextual imaginings come to nothing, of course, and we leave the theater mumbling something about great chemistry.

It is a rare movie character, indeed, who surprises us when she reveals that she’s lesbian or bisexual.

My original plan for this list was to include only lesbian/bi characters that showed up in mainstream movies (the kind that show in theaters, and not only at queer film festivals), but there weren’t enough to fill the list. What we’re left with is are the top 11 lesbian/bi reveals on film, assuming you know nothing about the movie going into the theater.

For the purposes of this list, “top” doesn’t necessarily mean “best” in terms of advancing the lesbian community’s image. It might mean the reveal was well-plotted, that the character was a refreshing addition to the lesbian canon – or it could just mean she was a manipulative, stalking psychopath.

11. Kate Veatch – Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) It certainly qualifies as a reveal when, in the last 90 seconds of Dodgeball, Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor) introduces her girlfriend to her dodgeball team. Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn) and White Goodman (Ben Stiller) spend two hours dodging balls and wrenches, tossing out snappy one-liners, and vying for the Veatch’s affection. Not once in the time that she’s pseudo-courting both men does she mention that she has a girlfriend. Nor do the writers hint that she has any attraction to women.

In the final minutes of the movie, after the Average Joes beat the Purple Cobras in their tournament, it looks as if the hero will get the girl. It is then that Kate introduces her girlfriend, Joyce (Scarlett Chorvat), who has come to Las Vegas to watch her play. What follows is one of the most ridiculous conversations to ever to make it to film.

One Average Joe teammate to another: I told you she was a lesbian. The other teammate: Wow. Good call. Kate: Hey! I’m not a lesbian!

Peter: You’re not? Kate: No. I’m bisexual.

And then she grabs Peter and kisses him, because everyone knows “bisexual” is just a code word – much like the pornographic classic, “I’m here to fix your copier.”

10. April – April’s Shower (2006) The lesbian in love with her straight best friend is only one of the many clichés dropped clunkily into Trish Doolan’s April’s Shower. There is the bickering butch/femme couple, the hippie earth mother and the always-convenient exposition via the character who’s had too much to drink. And although no one wants to be outed, especially at her own bridal shower, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when Alex (Doolan) announced to the group gathered for bride-to-be April’s (Maria Cina) shower that once upon a time, she and April were lovers.

April: Paulie’s a little upset with me right now because he says I avoid intimacy.

Alex: That’s how you were when we were together.

One of the other shower guests: You two were in a relationship?

Alex: April and I were lovers for five years!

The reveal is not met with shock that April has been in a relationship with a woman, but shock that she managed to conceal it for half a decade.

9. Rebecca Gilles – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) Rebecca Gilles (Jacinda Barrett) isn’t a lesbian in Helen Fielding’s written sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary, but she is in the cinematic adaptation, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

Bridget’s patented neuroses cause her to think that Rebecca is out to steal Mark Darcy away from her, and, of course, we, the audience, believe right along her; why shouldn’t we? Rebecca seems to follow Mark Darcy everywhere. She’s at work with him, at his dinner parties, at his charity dinners, even on his and Bridget’s romantic ski holiday.

Ultimately, though, Rebecca confesses the reason for her ubiquitous presence in Mark Darcy’s life: She’s in love with Bridget. The subtext is there all along, but there’s no way you noticed.

It has been argued that Rebecca is a sad-sack excuse for a lesbian character, pining away for an entire movie after a straight girl. But, I’d argue quite the opposite. Rebecca is a top-notch barrister with excellent athletic ability and a penchant for pop-culture trivia. So, she happens to be in love with Bridget Jones. I am a little, too.

Bridget accepts Rebecca’s reveal and her first lesbian kiss in stereotypical Englishwoman fashion: “Thank you very much,” she says. “That was lovely.”

8. Annabelle – Loving Annabelle (2006) Every lesbian knows that the best way to reveal your sexuality among a new group of friends is a good old-fashioned game of “I Never.” When Annabelle shows up to a new Catholic boarding school, she has all of her lesbian accessories in tow (guitar, combat boots, tattoo), but just to make sure her friends don’t mistake her for an average emo punkster, she busts out with, “I’ve never slept with a woman” during a tipsy dorm-room game of “I Never.” Her new classmates are shocked, intrigued, and impressed, but not contemptuous.

Of course, that is only the first reveal in Loving Annabelle. The second one changes not only the course of Annabelle’s life, but her literature teacher, Simone’s, as well. When Annabelle reveals the reason she won’t surrender her Buddhist beads, it catches Simone completely off guard.

Simone: Why are you making this so hard? Annabelle: The first person I fell in love with gave them to me. Simone: You still in love with him?

Annabelle: She moved to Europe last year with her family.

Overall, Annabelle’s reveal is treated with excited deference by her peers and guarded kindness by her teacher – until Simone’s guard drops completely and her kindness gives way to passion.

7. Lucy Diamond – D.E.B.S. (2004) Say you’re the top student at an elite all-girls crime-fighting school, and you’re staking out a notorious criminal mastermind as she rendezvous with a known killer. You’re thinking arms deal. You’re thinking assassination. What you’re not thinking, when you accidentally tumble into said criminal mastermind after dinner, is this:

Lucy: You know. I don’t get it. I’m minding my own business on some stupid blind date, and you guys are all over me! Amy: A blind date? Lucy: Yeah. Amy: With that Russian girl? But, I didn’t know you were a… Lucy: Why would you know? Amy: I just – wow. That just so totally torpedoes my thesis. Lucy: Your what? Amy: I’m doing a paper on you.
When Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster) reveals to Amy Bradshaw (Sara Foster) that she is a lesbian, Amy is thrown off only for a second. Within moments, she’s deconstructing Lucy’s sexuality and trying to understand it in relation to feminism and Lucy’s overcompensating criminal mentality.

The reveal is important because it forces Amy to examine her sexuality, but Lucy Diamond’s attraction to women has nothing to do with the fact that she’s a super-criminal. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the timeworn lesbian criminals of yore, with their perverse sexuality pushing them toward mass murder.

6. Patti – Under The Tuscan Sun (2003) During Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) announced that no one would mistake her or Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) for lesbians because they “screw boys like whores on tequila.” No wonder she’s been so miserable these past four seasons.

In Under The Tuscan Sun, Oh has a slightly bubblier role to play, as Patti, Frances’ (Diane Lane) lesbian best friend. When Patti and her partner, Grace (Kate Walsh) discover they’re expecting a child, they send Frances to Tuscany on their Gay & Away tour. Even though Patti’s sexuality is revealed in a far less dramatic way than her subsequent arrival in Italy – plus one huge baby belly, minus one partner – it is a reveal that added the remarkable Sandra Oh to the lesbian canon as the fun-loving Patti. A much-needed addition that will not soon be forgotten.

5. Shug Avery and Celie Harris – The Color Purple (1985)

Even though they are set at odds from their first introduction (“You sure is ugly”), Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg, who is poor and abused and forced into a marriage with a man who beats and rapes her, and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), a singer for whom Celie’s husband carries a torch, form an unlikely friendship and fall into an even more unlikely affair in The Color Purple. Through Shug, Celie finds strength and her own worth. Though I, like many, would have liked to see the book more thoroughly translated to the screen, Celie’s genuine and beautiful smile after she shares her first kiss with Shug is an iconic moment in lesbian film. The two part ways before the end of the movie: Shug marries, and Celie is reunited with her sister and children, but their brief romance remains one of the most positive lesbian portrayals to date.

Celie: Don’t nobody love me. Shug: I love you. Celie: You think I’s ugly. Shug: No I don’t. Celie: You ugly…you sure is ugly….you still ugly. Shug: [laughs] Amen. Oh, Ms. Celie, that was just the salt in sugar, me being jealous of you and Albert. I think you’re beautiful.
4. Maud Lilly- Fingersmith (2005) Fingersmith tells the story of two young women Sue Trinder (Sally Hawkins), a street trained and orphaned pickpocket, and Maud Lilly (Elaine Cassidy), a lady in society, out to con one another. One is out for money, the other for freedom. Abused by the man she believes to be her uncle, Maud thinks her only way out is through marriage. She hatches a plan with the nefarious Mr. Rivers, but then falls in love with Sue, their intended victim.

With enough twists and turns to have you sitting on rewind, it’s hard to keep track of who we’re supposed to root for (or which woman is revealing what about her sexuality). In the end though, Sue and Maud get their happily ever after.

Maud: You did it before…we weren’t dreaming, were we? Sue: That was just to start you off, Miss- Maud: Were we? [They kiss]
3. Barbara – Notes on a Scandal (2006) The most offensive lesbian reveal in recent years comes from a film that never even uses the word “lesbian.” In Notes on a Scandal Barbara Covett’s (Judi Dench) reveal comes in exposition from her co-workers who ask after Barbara’s former “companion,” Jennifer.

If, in Notes on a Scandal, you’re hoping for a late-bloomer story about an older woman who finds love with a vivacious, young teacher, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

After the pseudo-reveal, Barbara discovers that Sheba (Cate Blanchett) is having an affair with a male student. The closeted nature of Barbara’s life has left such an emotional void that she begins a perverse and almost psychotic relationship with Sheba – if you can consider full-on blackmail to be a relationship.

The problem with Notes on a Scandal is that it doesn’t reveal a lesbian character who happens to be beyond redemption; it reveals a woman who is a manipulative monster because she is a lesbian – or at least, that’s the impression unsophisticated viewers will take away from it. It’s more likely due to the fact that her lesbian sexuality has been so repressed, but that’s not a nuance audiences are likely to discern.

It’s the kind of mainstream movie reveal that ensures that the queer closet remains a very real place.

2. Jess – Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1989) If the all-boys boarding school of Notes on a Scandal is the least likely place to find a lesbian coming-out story, the oppressive and fundamental Elim Pentecostal church is probably next in line.

In 1990, the BBC created quite a stir when they released a TV adaptation of Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

The movie tells the story of Jess, played beautifully by the late Charlotte Coleman, who – despite growing up in a household where her parents are both regularly spoken to by God – does not even question it when she begins to fall for her best friend Melanie (Cathryn Bradshaw). Jess’ reveal is personal and poignant to anyone who’s ever faced oppression at the hands of religion: She declares that there is no reason why she can’t love both God and Melanie.

When Jess refuses to repent of her “sin” (“Never learn to hide what’s good”), she is tied down by the “chords of love,” prayed over for 14 hours and then locked up, by her mother, without food for 36 hours. She is later abandoned by her lover and forced from her home and from her church. Through it all, Jess refuses to deny her family, her God or herself, making her reveal timelessly relevant.

1. Luce – Imagine Me & You (2005) Rachel (Piper Perabo) is halfway down the aisle to marry longtime boyfriend Heck (Matthew Goode) when she is startled to see her florist, Luce (Lena Headey), walking the other direction in the shadows. At the reception, the two women share a lovely moment concealing that Rachel’s wedding ring has fallen to the bottom of a punch bowl.

Rachel’s attraction to Luce is immediate and intense; so, naturally, she arranges to set Luce up with Heck’s best friend.

Days later, over dinner at Rachel and Heck’s, Luce reveals why the matchmaking scheme is doomed to fail.

Heck: So, what about you? Are you married? Ever been married? Ever going to get married? Luce: No. Well, maybe now the law’s changed. Heck: How do you mean? Luce: Well, I’m gay. Heck: [Laughs and then realizes it’s not a joke.] Oh, um, well done.
None of the characters treat Luce’s pronouncement as anything out of the ordinary. Heck is a little surprised, but gracious. His best friend, Coop, is also surprised, but skeptical. (Aren’t all lesbians secretly looking for a man to convert them?) Rachel is shocked, but that’s her own attraction speaking more than anything else.

Oh, that all rea-life lesbian reveals could be handled with this kind of aplomb. (And this kind of reciprocal affection.)

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