hollywood
LGBTQ-STYLE ON THE SILVER SCREEN
by chris carpenter Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and Cupid’s bow and arrows are at the ready.
Some hope to be love-struck, while others may do everything they can to dodge his amorous arsenal…Either way, there is little doubt that love will be in the air for the next few weeks. Lots of people turn to romantic movies this time of year for both encouragement and
solace, which got us atThe Rage Monthly thinking about those LGBTQ-themed films that can be considered “most romantic.” I have my personal preferences, but I also enlisted the help of nearly 30 gay and lesbian Facebook friends to identify their overall favorites.
The notion of romantic movies geared toward our
community is actually fairly recent, with few such films made before the 1990s. Most previous films featuring LGBTQ characters usually saw them being killed, committing suicide or otherwise being punished for their non-conforming yearnings. Pioneering early productions incorporating more positive depictions of LGBTQ protagonists includeMidnight Cowboy(1969), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971),Dog Day Afternoon(1975); Making Love (1982) andMy Beautiful Laundrette(1985).
carol midnight cowboy my beautiful laundrette Things really started to improve
with 1987’s sympatheticMaurice. This gorgeous Merchant- Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s autobiographical novel, which Forster refused to allow to be published while he was living, focuses on the repressed feelings shared between two young, upper-class British men. While their relationship doesn’t endure, the title character is more suc- cessful with a dark and handsome groundskeeper (memorably played by Rupert Graves).
Two recent, admirably unapologetic additions
to the lesbian love canon areBlue Is the Warmest Color, the acclaimed and erotic 2013 film about a young French woman’s sexual awakening and 2015’s award-winningCarol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as women having a secret affair in the closeted 1950s.
maurice beautiful thing For many LGBTQ people, the most cherished
Pre-‘90s romantic favorites among the ladies include the true storySilkwood (1983), in which Cher plays a lesbian, power plant worker, caring for her radiation-exposed friend (an early Oscar-nominated performance by Meryl Streep); Desert Hearts(1986), a passionate, 1950’s-set love story between a divorcee and the Nevada ranch hand she meets; andPersonal Best (1982), Robert Towne’s graphic-at-the-time exploration of love between two female athletes and the male coach who threatens to come between them.
silkwood
romantic movies are coming-of-age stories. Frequently cited in my survey were 1996’s Beautiful Thing, the British tale of tentative, first love between two put-upon high school boys (based on Jonathan Harvey’s hit play); the similar but lesbian-themedThe Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995); andGet Real (1998), in which a brainy, gay boy crushes on his school’s star athlete and finds his attentions reciprocated, at least for a time. Two of my personal favorites in this subgenre are 1996’s Lilies, about a tortured love triangle in a Catholic school for boys, andCome Undone (2000), a no-holds-barred French drama about two, toned and tanned, young men who fall in love on the beach during summer vacation.
personal best
FEBRUARY 2017 | RAGE monthly 23
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