LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Lesbians Rule as HBO Airs If These Walls Could Talk 2 |
a review by Mark J. Huisman |
During the prelude to 1972, one of the segments in HBO's If These Walls Could Talk 2, there is a shot of a placard reading, "Women: The Largest Untapped Natural Resource." As HBO's talent roster for this popular series demonstrates, that is certainly no longer the case. The original If These Walls Could Talk featured a trio of stories about women and abortion, all set in the same house during different decades. If These Walls Could Talk 2 follows that narrative construct with one exception: This time, lesbians rule the roost. From a story by Sylvia and Alex Sichel (All Over Me) Martha Coolidge directs 1972, in which four college housemates, Linda (Michelle Williams), Jeanne (Natasha Lyonne), Karen (Nia Long) and Michelle (Amy Carlson), struggle to reconcile their lesbian sexuality and feminist politics. Linda thinks it's possible "to have [my freedom] and be in love, too," but finds that belief tested when the four are booted from a campus women's group they helped found because their sexual orientation makes the other women uncomfortable. Linda's own sexual taste comes into question when, during a visit to a local bar where butch/femme couples still stride the floor, she becomes attracted to Amy (Chloe Sevingy), a slicked back butch wearing a pressed shirt and slacks, despite her pals' disgust. ("Tell me that's not a tie!" Karen exclaims.) While she gamely tries to act the part, however, Sevigny is woefully miscast. She lacks both the swaggering gait and imposing stature one expects of a butch and, what might have been a screen-burning pairing with Williams falls flat. Sparing us yet another dull parenthood story, writer/director Anne Heche's 2000 raucously examines the process by which two dykes get preggo. After ditching their intended gay sperm donors"Do either of you guys remember the ZERO parenting responsibility clause?"Kal (Ellen DeGeneres) drags her partner to a sperm bank, something about which Fran (Sharon Stone) is dubious: "What genius wants to jerk off in a cup for twentyfive bucks?" Heche is wonderfully able to wring melancholy from humor, like the scene in which Fran and Kal try to narrow the donor roster. "I don't have sperm," Kal says, gesticulating her way through a stack of profiles. "I'm freaking out because I don't have sperm." This is DeGeneres' finest work in years. Stone, who finally gets to skip sex with some sagging-ass man to enjoy nookie with a real-life dyke, is totally up to the task. Heche's dialogue sometimes slips into soapbox but quickly recovers. But another problem isn't so easily remedied. With the exception of Nia Long in 1972 and Regina King here (who plays a sperm bank director) there are no other women of color on the roster: The leads, vast majority of supporting characters and the writers and directors are all white. And at the dawn of a new millennium, the inequity cries out to not only be addressed, but to be fixed. This program doesn't look like our community, and that's a shame. Despite the craftsmanship and intelligence of 1972 and 2000, I have seldom seen a piece of filmmaking with such an intelligent sense of queer history and deep emotive honesty as writer/director Jane Anderson's 1961. Heterosexual imagery cut to Doris Day's "Que Se Ra, Se Ra" fades into The Children's Hour, at the very moment Martha (Shirley MacLaine) breaks down with guilt over her love for Karen (Audrey Hepburn). This image of hysteria widens to reveal that we are actually in a cinema, where two older women raptly watch the film. These lovers, one with gray-streaked dark hair, the other with white hair neatly braided and pinned atop her head, lean on each other in silent support, one pair of hands clasped next to teardampened cheeks. The pained understanding on their faces not only speaks volumes about the isolation and secrecy of their lesbian lives, but also reveals the depth of their love. Quickly interrupted by some rowdy teenagers, the two lovers awkwardly separate; hands fall to the side, and a canyon of space comes between their shoulders, as they slouch down in their seats. Subtly and effectively, Anderson repositions a piece of cinema many of us today find dated and hateful as a document of a time during which real life lesbian love struggled to be heard and seen, often with disastrous results. Back at the house they have shared for nearly fifty years, Edith (Vanessa Redgrave) makes tea and lays out their night clothing while Abby (Marian Seldes) checks the hatchlings in her birdhouse. When a freak accident sends Abby to the hospital, a frantic Edith is left in the waiting room, forbidden a bedside visit because she isn't family. The next morning, Edith discovers that Abby has died, although no one woke her, because she isn't family. Edith notifies Abby's only relatives and quickly separates closets and bureaus into two rooms to look as though they were only roommates. Even treasured photos are taken from the walls. But no trauma compares to the crushing onslaught of slights Edith endures when Abby's bespectacled nephew (Paul Giamatti) and his wife (Elizabeth Perkins) arrive at the house after the funeral and instantly lay claim to everything, including the very house for which Abby and Edith paid together. (Even though Abby and Edith have agreed on many things, she is not mentioned in Abby's will and is, therefore, unprotected when she most needs protection.) Had all the heterosexual actors who played queer characters in the past decade inhabited them with such tender honesty and depth of spirit as Seldes and Redgrave do here, critics like me would have had scant reason to complain. Only briefly on screen, Seldes shines as a woman who delights in her love for another woman. Scene after scene, gesture after gesture, Redgrave's work is among the most glorious portrayals of lesbian love ever recorded. Redgrave's portrayal is the first towering queer performance of the century and, from this point forward, a new and gloriously high standard for every heterosexual actor who sets out to inhabit one of our queer souls. Mark J. Huisman is a New York-based freelance journalist whose work appears in The Village Voice and The Nation, among others. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 2, Mar. 10, 2000. |