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2011 Year in Review: Movies

If there’s a theme to 2011’s crop of films featuring lesbian/bi women, it’s that this was a very good year for emerging voices. First time and younger filmmakers made a mark in huge ways this year, providing everything from spellbinding documentaries (No Look Pass), heart-wrenching drama (Pariah, Break My Fall, Circumstance), and fresh comedy (Jamie and Jessie are Not Together, Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same). Pair that with the quality coming from established filmmakers like Celine Sciamma (Tomboy), and you have a year marked by the presence of strong, unique voices.

Hard Hitters

Nowhere is that strength of vision more prominent than in the year’s dramas. Well-meaning (but tired) melodramas were drowned out by clear-eyed, nuanced filmmaking, most evident in Pariah, the story of a young African-American woman struggling with her identity, and Circumstance, which features the romance between two teenaged girls in Iran. As AfterEllen.com writer Grace Chu noted in her review of Pariah, both movies share a few common threads – not the least of which is the fact they were both Sundance films selected for distribution.

Both films are about young women coming of age and exploring their sexual identity in less than welcoming conditions. Both protagonists encounter acute trauma as a result of expressing themselves in a repressive environment, such as imprisonment (Circumstance) and violence (Pariah). Both women have sympathetic fathers who try to protect them from the darker side of religious influences. Both women find solace in underground youth culture.
They also happen to both be stunning pieces of filmmaking, with unflinching performances from both casts and the sort of emotional weight that ensures that each respective story stays with you a long, long time.

Three Veils also tackled similar subject matter, featuring two Middle Eastern American women (one of whom was played by Sheetal Sheth, of The World Unseen fame) struggling with their own sexuality and identity issues. While lighter in tone and less hard-hitting than Pariah and Circumstance, Sheetal Sheth and Angela Zahra as queer middle eastern/Arab women are wonderful to watch.

Also strong was Purple Sea (Viola di Mare), an Italian period piece (based on a true story), of two women who fall in love in the repressive 1800s. With strong acting and a refreshingly unpredictable plot, it threw tired clichés right out the window.

Fish Child (El Nino Pez) stood alone as a devastating piece on class and sexual inequality haunting the neighborhoods of modern day Buenos Aires. Featuring a love story between a badly abused working class maid and the young woman whose family she works for, it begins with a murder and only gets darker from there. Thankfully, it also featured an ethereal lightness and a real chemistry between the leads. In ways, it even recalled The Brave One and other films with female “revenge fantasy” themes.

On the more personal side, Break My Fall was a slice of life drama that depicted two women (who happen to be bandmates) falling miserably out of love. Directed by a first time filmmaker, it happens to be a great example of this year’s emphasis on strong new voices and uncompromising vision.

On a similar note, Trigger featured two bandmates who used to be a couple, on their band’s one-night-only reunion. It’s another intensely personal movie, though the framing (and the characters) were older and wiser than Break My Fall’s young lovers, and the flow of the story very different. It’s also special for being actress Tracy Wright’s final film appearance — she died of cancer in 2010. Tomboy, from filmmaker Celine Sciamma (Water Lillies), was not explicitly queer, but it dealt strongly with issues of gender identity and childhood. It enjoyed wider release than many of this year’s queer films, making waves in mainstream publications (including the A/V Club), for its honest tone and emotional subject matter. While last year’s mainstream releases gave us a complex lesbian household (The Kids are All Right) and a “fluid” ballerina (Natalie Portman‘s Oscar-winning turn in Black Swan), 2011’s queer women of the big (and wide release) screen included a bisexual character played by Zooey Deschanel (Our Idiot Brother), and possibly the most badass female character of the decade in Lisbeth Salander, in David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A bisexual hacker with a dark past and a take-no-prisoner’s attitude, she’s been in our hearts and minds here at AfterEllen.com ever since the books took the world by storm and Noomi Rapace first appeared in the original Swedish films, and Rooney Mara has just taken (perhaps stolen) the mantle and run with it. Another high-profile release that turned heads was Glenn Close‘s passion project Albert Nobbs, about a working class woman passing for a man in early 20th-century Ireland. It was complex and beautifully acted, netting serious Oscar buzz. Even better — it will enjoy national release (in select theaters) later this January.

Both Love Crime and the lesbian-ish vampire-ish schoolgirl-centered Moth Diaries were deliciously dark thrillers, and while neither garnered quite the same hype as the internationally known Dragon Tattoo, both brought serious steam to the screen. Of course, if you like your lesbian vampire flicks to star full-on lesbian vampires, your best bet was German We Are The Night on IFC. However, if you wanted extra schoolgirl coming of age action and Rooney Mara, Tanner Hall was certainly your flick of choice. No vampires (or dragon tattoos) in that one, sadly.

We had plenty of the “usual” lesbian subplots in movies that comprise the quirkier side of “mainstream.” The Family Tree and The Roommate figured among them. The Perfect Family stood out in this category, notably because it was helmed by out director Ann Renton and featured serious star talent (it also featured at the Tribeca Film Festival). True Life

One of the best personal documentaries to come out in years, No Look Pass profiled the charismatic, complex Emily Tay – a star basketball player on the Harvard University squad and semi-closeted lesbian. Following the course of a year in Emily’s life, the film shows her struggling with the expectations of her first-generation Asian American immigrant parents and learning to play a professional sport abroad, effectively telling a personal story that reflects expertly on larger themes. It remains one of the year’s absolute best queer films, in any category.

It was also one of the few personal documentaries, as much of the rest provided a whole world of righteous indignation over gay rights and the wider political picture, across contexts.

Another personal documentary, Hit So Hard, let audiences get up close with Patty Schemel, the out drummer from Hole (among other high-profile bands). AE editor Trish Bendix outlined the SXSW selection in a preview:

Patty Schemel has played with some of the best bands of the last three decades. The out drummer has been on the kits for Hole, Bastard (a short-lived super group with Courtney Love, Louise Post and Gina Crosley), Imperial Teen and Juliette and the Licks. And luckily, she’s brought a camera with her to recording sessions, backstage areas and into the studio. It was only right that she’d hand over the hours of footage to some capable friends (including director P. David Ebersole) to make a movie out of it.

The Strange History of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a slick, well-produced HBO documentary that covered the history and the inner political workings of the United State’s Military’s discriminatory policy, which, until very recently, made being openly gay in the armed forces a very big no-no. Despite some issues regarding representation (in essence, the interviewees tended towards snowy white), reviewer Ali Davis found it worthwhile:

The Strange History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is well worth your time. It’s an absorbing account of an important piece of LGBT history. And a stark reminder that your Congressional representatives can go all loopy if you let them off the hook for even a minute. Basic fairness and common sense can win out in the end, but you have to keep reminding them of what that is.
If you needed to get your righteous rage meter filled up, three excellent (and difficult) docs were also on offer, perhaps as a worthy counter to some of the year’s good news for LGBT rights (including the end of DADT and marriage equality for New York). Outrage covered the issue of blinding hypocrisy of closeted LGBT lawmakers who vote against gay rights — featuring a few of the worst examples in the current legislative world. Meanwhile, Illegal Love (which, like Outrage, aired on Logo); was an interesting French Documentary on the Proposition 8 debacle (which took away the right of gay California residents to marry).

Ali Davis’ review spells it out:

It’s odd and sort of embarrassing watching an outsider try to make sense of the shameful efforts of one group of our citizens to revoke rights from others. But in a way, seeing the basics get spelled out so that a French viewer can understand what was going on starkly highlights the ridiculousness — and inherent meanness — of the Prop 8 campaign.
If the previous Logo BeCause films didn’t have you fired up enough, The World’s Worst Place to be Gay really brought home the desperate need for comprehensive human rights everywhere – especially places that are years off of marriage equality and still struggling with the whole “LGBT people as human beings” thing. The film follows Scott Mills an openly gay BBC radio personality, as he travels to Uganda, meeting both the victims of the country’s infamously anti-gay policies and attitudes, and the leaders who propagate them. It’s a powerful, often devastating piece of work that shows all too well the ways unfettered homophobia can lead to serious, systemic abuse.

On the lighter side

Thankfully, there was plenty of fun to be had in 2011’s comedies, which were fresh and funky – and more often than not, incredibly offbeat. Gigola was a pure guilty pleasure built around gender bending. A French romp set in the swinging ’60s, it tells the tale of Gigola, a female gigolo who gets all the ladies – and then has them pay her for the pleasure. It was goofy and even a little soft-core porn-y at times, but nonetheless a very good time if you were in the mood for a little guilty pleasure.

Joe + Belle was perhaps even further off the beaten path, an Israeli film about a girl who climbs into another girl’s bathtub to commit suicide, but instead ends up killing her boyfriend. Of course, they go on the lamb and fall in love, making this little black comedy romp complete with murder, bombs, and dropped bodies.

If you wanted some tunes to go with your laughs, you’d be happy to know that Jamie and Jessie are Not Together was a sweet, very funny musical about two best friends who are not in a relationship, despite what everyone around them may think. A little offbeat, but mostly very sweet and down to earth, this was arguably the best romantic comedy of the year.

Not down to earth at all (and all the better for it) was the wacky, Woody Allen-inspired Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, a black and white riff on 50s schlock sci-fi, starring, of course, a lesbian space alien. You’d be hard-pressed to find a flick more dedicated to its bizarre (and wonderful) vision this year.

Truly in a class of its own was Elektra Luxx, presenting a delightful world of strippers, porn stars, and call girls, some of which are totally attracted to one another. Starring Carla Gugino, it was precisely the guilty pleasure that Sucker Punch rightfully should have been. Our own Dorothy Snarker wrote of one of the film’s best and most Sapphic elements in her preview:

… besides noticing a blond bombshell Gugino, you probably noticed a delightfully daffy Adrianne Palicki. She returns in the sequel as unsuccessful porn star Holly Rocket who is madly in love with her call girl best friend/roommate Bambi (Entourage‘s Emmanuelle Chriqui). Honey, I can relate. OK, not about the porn star/call girl stuff, but the secretly in love with your roommate stuff. That’s like Lesson No. 4 in the Big Lesbian Handbook.
All together now

The most important thing a lesbian film – or any film, for that matter, is to resonate with an audience and make a statement. It can be as simple as Gigola‘s playful gender twisting, as nuanced as Pariah‘s take on identity, or as clearly stated as much of this year’s documentary work was on fairness and human rights. Importantly, interesting work was coming from queer women filmmakers this year as new voices offered fresh perspectives and both silliness and seriousness were equally well represented. There’s never been a better time to pick up a camera – or for that matter, a queer film festival ticket.

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