How To Make A Good Lesbian Movie
by Malinda Lo, Special to 365Gay.com


Watching a lesbian movie is a bit like having dinner with your family. You want it to go well because you love them and want to support them, but it’s equally likely that it will go sideways pretty quickly.

I’d like to hope that every lesbian flick I see is a brilliant representation of queer women, but the truth is that a lesbian with a camera and a story idea does not automatically translate into a good film. After watching a string of mediocre lesbian movies recently, I was about to conclude that it might actually be dangerous to combine lesbians with film cameras.

But taking a look back at some of our best first-time features, including Go Fish, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, D.E.B.S., and Desert Hearts, showed me that good films can indeed go hand-in-hand with low budgets, inexperienced actors, and first-time directors. It just requires that magic combination of solid storytelling, acting skill, and directorial confidence—obviously something that is much easier to say than do.

One of the most important elements of a good film—if not the most important—is good storytelling. This doesn’t mean we have to have a plot filled with red herrings and fast-paced car chases, but it does mean that a good story is about more than “high concept.”

How to Pick Up Girls (2003), which recently screened at the 2004 Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, starts off with a hilarious idea: two dating-savvy dykes teach their shy best friends how to pick up girls. Filmed in the style of a “mockumentary,” each of the four women tells stories about their (bad) date experiences, and we follow along as they fumble their way into romantic relationships.

Unfortunately, the great concept gets lost in a meandering storyline that distracts attention from character development, and left me mostly confused. At the end of the movie I couldn’t remember the characters’ names, and I wasn’t particularly enthralled by their dating conquests. What was memorable were the funny Saturday Night Live-type segments interspersed throughout the film, including things not to do during your first date, and a brief documentary in which a string of lesbians recount their worst dating experiences.

In comparison, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Maria Maggenti’s first feature, shows us that it’s not important to have a high concept in order to create a memorable movie. Based on the tried-and-true teen romance formula, Two Girls in Love tells the story of Randy Dean (Laurel Holloman), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who falls for rich popular girl Evie Roy (Nicole Parker). Their romance, while slightly complicated by homophobic friends, sticks to the traditional first-love storyline, and allows the viewer to get to know both characters as they get to know each other. As a result, by the end of the movie we’re rooting for the girls’ romance to succeed because we’ve seen how both characters care about each other.

Another example of a good story concept gone wrong can be found in the movie Make a Wish (2002), which has screened this year at various gay and lesbian film festivals across the country. Directed by Sharon Ferranti, the film puts a lesbian twist on the slasher genre made infamous by Friday the 13th, and centers on Susan (Moynan King) and her annual birthday weekend camping trip—to which she invites all of her ex-girlfriends. This could result in enough dyke drama to make for a seriously horrific weekend in the woods, even without the crazed serial killer who is killing off all of Susan’s exes one by one.

However, the storyline is hampered by bad dialogue and overly-predictable plotting. The heavy foreshadowing that precedes each character’s death is amplified by “scary” music that signals the arrival of the serial killer. And it’s obvious from early on in the film who the prime suspect is—not because she is painted as an evil psychopath but because so much care is taken to distract attention away from her.

In comparison, Angela Robinson’s D.E.B.S. (her first feature film), which puts a lesbian twist on a different Hollywood formula—a top-secret spy agency along the lines of Charlie’s Angels meets James Bond—succeeds because its plot, while predictable, is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. It incorporates unbelievable coincidences into the story with a wink and a nudge (for example, the heroine literally running into the villainess and then falling in love with her), whereas the unbelievable coincidences in Make a Wish (a girl wanders the wrong way in the woods only to be killed, for example) are somewhat boring because they lack a sense of humor, or because the humor is so over the top it's not that funny.

To be fair, it’s not necessary to have a complicated plot to tell a good story; a good movie can instead be character-driven. That requires, of course, fully-developed characters who go beyond stereotypes (for example, the studly butch, the shy femme, the vampy sex vixen). Few lesbian films reach this level of complexity because too many of them depend on the characters’ identities as lesbians as their defining characteristic, or they try too hard to cram too many Important Lessons into the film.

An example of the former is Everything Relative (1996), which spends so much time focusing on its characters' identities as lesbians that you want to scream "Enough already! We get it!" before you're even halfway through the film. An example of the latter is It's in the Water (1996), a mildly entertaining lesbian love story which is hindered by the fact that its two interesting lead characters are surrounded by thinly drawn (and frequently, poorly acted) supporting characters and subplots. While the relationship between the two women is nuanced, it's overshadowed by subplots that are trying too hard to hit you over the head with messages about AIDS, the hypocrisy of the anti-gay movement, and the cost of social conformity.

By contrast, Donna Deitch’s classic Desert Hearts (1985) tackles a similar subject--the growing relationship between two women, only one of whom identifies as gay--but includes nuanced, three-dimensional characters and storylines. The character of Vivian (Helen Shaver), a professor who comes to Reno to obtain a divorce, and the woman she falls in love with, Cay (Patricia Charbonneau) are both multilayered and complex, as are the supporting characters. Like It's in the Water, Desert Hearts also explores social hypocrisy and the cost of conformity, but it does so in a subtle, intricate way that supports the central storyline rather than detracting from it.

It’s still not enough just to have a good story and good characters, however; a good film also must have a good director. This means that the director has to be comfortable with using the camera, adept at coaxing performances out of the actors, and skilled at translating the story into film. The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love was Maria Maggenti’s first full-length feature, and it shows in some of the scenes, where the camera angles are noticeably awkward. Similarly, much of Go Fish—a first-time feature from Rose Troche, who went on to direct several episodes of Six Feet Under and The L Word—seems filmed by amateurs, but both movies have other qualities that makes those clumsy elements forgivable, including good storytelling and, most notably, decent acting.

It’s not surprising that many first-time films feature young actors in their first film roles, and a certain amount of inexperience is to be expected. Laurel Holloman, Nicole Parker, Guinevere Turner, and Patricia Charbonneau were all first-timers when they hit the big screen in their lesbian roles. What sets them apart is the fact that they all understood what it took to act on film: understatement.

Unlike theater, where actors often exaggerate their expressions (to a certain extent) because they are on stage, and thus farther away from the audience that is watching them, film and television acting is based on the close-up. This means that too much eyebrow-lifting or contorted expressions of surprise/sadness/anger/etc. simply looks ridiculous on screen.

The painful result of these kinds of contortions can perhaps be most clearly and infamously seen in Bar Girls (1995), but it is also evident in many films today, like Lee Friedlander's recent Girl Play, which won a major award at the Outfest 2004 Film Competition. The film was adapted from a play, and it shows: while the exaggerated acting and the actors' habit of talking directly into the camera may work for theater, it doesn't translate well to film. The movie has other things going for it, but it could have been so much better if those involved truly understood the difference between stage and screen.

One of the best actors in How to Pick Up Girls is Bryher Grey, who plays a shy butch named Em. In comparison to the other actors in the film—many of whom seem theater-trained—Grey was simply a writer who stumbled into her role because she knew the cast and director. Her lack of theater training shows (in a good way) because she is one of the few actors who doesn’t overact.

Filmmaking is an expensive hobby, but the success of films like Go Fish show us that it doesn’t take a big budget to make a good movie. Go Fish was filmed on a budget of $15,000 and ended up grossing $2.4 million. As The Washington Post noted in 1994, “Shot in black-and-white and seemingly run through a food processor, this grainy, indifferently edited film is made up of vignettes separated by inscrutably artsy montages of spinning tops and whatnot. Still, its high spirits, candor, wit and heart prevail over its outward cheesiness.”

So if you’re a talented novice filmmaker with a great story to tell, take heart: you don’t need a big budget to make that movie, you just need to embrace the idea that execution is as important as a good concept, and that "more" isn't always better when it comes to acting and writing.