Seventeen years before Radley Metzger directed the French school girl lesbian romance movie Therese and Isabelle, in 1951 Jacqueline Audry directed a wholly different movie about a lesbian affair in a girls’ school. Set in France, Olivia, which has been beautifully restored and is streaming on The Criterion Channel  or is available as  a BD with English subtitles.

IMDb sums up the story as “Olivia, an English teenager, arrives at a finishing school in France. The majority of the pupils in the school are divided into two camps: those that are devoted to the headmistress, Mlle Julie and those who follow Mlle Cara, an emotionally manipulative invalid who is obsessed with Mlle Julie.”

The drama is understated and subtle, but the emotions are apparent…to almost everyone in the school. Criterion themselves synopsize it this way, “Neglected for nearly seventy years, a singular landmark of lesbian cinema by one of France’s trailblazing women directors reemerges. Plunging the viewer—and the main character—into a lion’s den, Jacqueline Audry depicts a nineteenth-century boarding school for young girls, a house divided between its rival mistresses, Miss Julie (Edwige Feuillère) and Miss Cara (Simone Simon). As the two women compete for the affections of their students, they rouse passion, hatred, and unexpected reversals of fortune. Awash in spellbinding gothic atmosphere and a hothouse air of unspoken desire, OLIVIA is a daring feminist statement decades ahead of its time.”

I can’t really do better than that to set the scene, although I don’t think it’s gothic so much as wholly Belle Époque, fully idealized romanticism and richly festooned with superficial beauty and underlying decay; a movie version of a Renoir painting.

We learn almost nothing about Olivia’s circumstances, except that English schools are dire compared to French schools, but she is immediately liked by all the girls. It is the cook, Victoire who acts as Greek chorus for us, pointing out the factions of affection at the school.

The melodramatically unwell Mlle Cara welcomes Olivia, but the new girl is absolutely captivated by the cosmopolitan and elegant Mlle Julie. Mlle Cara sees this as a betrayal, and when Mlle Julie’s former favorite, Laura returns to the school it drives Cara into a hysterical fit.

Olivia has a single joyous day with the subject of her desire in Paris.  On the night of the holiday fête, Olivia lays in her room waiting for Mlle Julie to come to her as she said she would, but the headmistress is late and leaves almost immediately. A scream resounds and Mlle Julie finds Mlle Cara dead in her room. Whether her death is suicide or murder is never truly determined. Mlle Julie has lost everything, the woman she loves, all her money, her position and the love of the students and now, she must leave the school, as well.

Okay, so it’s not a happy ending, but wow what a lovely movie! It never once feels low-budget and sparse as There and Isabelle does. The girls’ school always is warm and welcoming, full of beauty and life. No echoing stone halls here, no miserly rations. Victoire serves up delicious food and prime commentary. The acting isn’t awkward at all. Everyone is very convincing and our feelings for the manipulative Cara are probably about the same as Mlle Julie’s, swinging rapidly from pity to exhaustion.

There are no sex scenes, but the few kisses and embraces are intimate and intense. Desire is not at all unspoken. It’s easy for us to understand the girls’ feelings and equally as difficult to sympathize with the adults. Mlle Julie for being inconstant to the only women, she says, she loved, Mlle Cara for being hysterical, Mlle Dubois for being clueless. Only Victoire and Frau Riesener, rise above this and it is Frau Riesener who inherits Cara’s estate and, presumably, Julie’s position.

I had no real expectation before watchingthis movie and I’m very glad I saw it after Therese and Isabelle.  Olivia was made ten years before The Children’s Hour and deserves at least as much a place in our history of lesbian media, as it has the double honor of being one of the first French films to show lesbian love, directed by an acclaimed female director. The end result is a take in which desire is made rawly visible without ever being made tawdry.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8 
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 3
Lesbian – 5

Overall- 8

Olivia is movie about the consequence of desire and its effect on the community, rather than one girl’s experience. It was worth a watch.