Radley Metzger’s 1968 movie Therese and Isabelle is …well, it’s a relic of both its time and place; the kind artist softcore that filled arthouse movie theaters, the kind of movie that passed for “European,” without being at all original in content or artistic, but also manages to not be bad enough to be amusing. Of all the old movies I have ever referenced here, Therese and Isabelle is one that I am constantly surprised I haven’t yet reviewed.  If you have interest in mid-20th century movies about lesbian relationships, this is available on the Internet Archive, so now would be a good time to watch it.

As an adult, Therese visits her old school, College du Lys (this is me grinning broadly), a boarding school for girls. While touring the grounds, she looks back on her experiences there, and how she and another student, Isabelle, fell in love.

The plot is just about as predictable and trite as imaginable. Therese’s mother had remarried, so the girl is half abandoned at this new, strange place. She and Isabelle become friends, then something more. Sublimating her growing desire for Isabel, Therese loses her virginity to a “suave” guy who clearly does all the young girls at the school and who today would be considered a predatory creep, but to the men who made this movie, is merely an inevitability.

Therese and Isabelle eventually admit their feelings and consummate the relationship, almost immediately after which Isabelle disappears from the school, transferred Therese is told. The final words of the movie are “I never saw Isabelle again.” As little as we know about Isabelle, we know nothing more about Therese.  She arrives, she experiences nostalgia, she leaves. Who she is, where she comes from, we’ll never know. Therese is an awkward, unhappy girl, but we’ll never really know what she becomes as an adult.

The straight sex scene is not explicit, but you know what is happening. The lesbian sex is given more time, more languid nudity, and voiceover to explain what Therese is feeling, in very symbolic language. We’re left with no doubt that her physical relationship with Isabelle was far more fulfilling than with Marcel or Claude or Jean-Pierre or whatever his name was. The cinematography isn’t even all that bad, and as a black and white film, I find myself seeing scenes surprising clearly for what is pretty obscured lighting in some cases. The only downside is that tiresome artifact of 30 year olds playing 15 year olds.

This movie tidily fits into so many of our Yuri tropes – even so far as the school name – to feel very comfortable and ever so slightly boring. It’s a slow movie and very of its time. It ticks off no new boxes for us now, but when looked at in the scale of 1968, I’m sure it was super progressive and artsy. In fact, when you take a look at Nakamura Asumiko’s upcoming A White Rose in Bloom, keep this movie in mind.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8
Story – A
Characters – 8
Service – Yes. Some nudity, sexual situations
LGBTQ – Nope. One person snarkily suggests that the two are “awfully close” than there are giggles. That’s it.
Yuri – 9

Overall – 7

Ultimately Therese and Isabel is a short memoir story masquerading as a 2-hour movie. “Story A” is timeless because it’s so thin and superficial. I can totally see a reboot of this being made, doing everything exactly the same with no changes getting praised even now.

Do you remember when a while ago when there was a spate of classic literature as updated movies? Jane Austen’s Emma became Clueless, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew became Ten Things I Hate About You. It’s not a new idea, but it’s always fun when a director you like takes a look at a stodgy old classic and manages to do it one better.

In the Half of It, Alice Wu takes on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and does it more than one better. 

You may remember Alice Wu – she was the driving force behind Saving Face, which I found to be utterly delightful when I attended the premier in 2005. Folks were pretty happy to hear that she’d be behind this teen lesbian drama. Having watched it, I can recommend it highly.

As you may remember from Cyrano de Bergerac, the plot revolves around a beautiful girl, Aster, the big incoherent galumph who loves her, Paul, who hires Cyrano to write wooing words for him. In this case, Cyrano is played by Ellie Chu, a world-weary high school girl who makes money by writing other student’s papers and who avoids other people…but is also attracted to Aster.

In this version of the story, Aster is smart and sensitive and so is Ellie, while Paul really tries and it becomes almost impossible to dislike him.  The core of the story is the nature of love and, while I think they all get it completely wrong, it did remind me of something. In Volume 2 of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Sayaka spends a lot of time thinking about the components of attraction. Why does someone confess feelings to another, what are those feeling composed of? There is a similar train of thought here – what makes us “fall in love” or even be attracted to another person? Sayaka comes to an obvious conclusion – that for most people, looks are the way they judge other people’s worth. When we’re young, this is especially sensible as we don’t have a lot of other factors we can use. We don’t know who we are, how can we really understand someone else. When Sayaka is thinking about how sempai liked her because she was pretty, it was a clue to her superficiality that Sayaka ultimately understood.

For Ellie, the story is not a romance, but it is a journey of self-discovery. There is a key scene where she and Paul are practicing his conversational skills. Ellie says, “I don’t need speaking practice,” but as we watch them converse it is apparent that yes, yes she did. Maybe not so she had words, which is Paul’s need, but so that she learns how to be a better human by caring about other humans. She does learn.  By the end of the story, all of the principals have changed for the better and while no one ends up with anyone else, we can hope they will all live happily ever after in lives that are richer for having known and cared about each other.

Racism is mentioned but never becomes a specific issue, but there are enough cues that its not truly subtext, either. The systemic oppression of religious community is also constant background refrain. These are the ever-present cosmic microwave background of this story, an ever-present relic of societal pressure.

The acting was superlative. The story was tight. This was a decent watch and I’ll look forward to more from Alice Wu.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 8 Very good until the end where it soared into sublime
Acting – 9
Story – 9 Great reworking of a brilliant, but deeply annoying classic
Lesbian – 6 Ellie’s journey is painful, but not excruciating.
Service – None

Overall – 9

Like I Am Not Okay With This, the story plumbs the depths of the torture of high school, with less blood.

DC’s very first African-American lead superhero, Black Lightning only got 11 issues from 1977 -1978 before DC cut many new titles. Black Lightning got another reboot in the 2000s and has been and out of several continuities since. In 2018, as part of it’s television franchise on the CW network, Black Lightning once again received a new starring role. And, frankly, I think this is a truly excellent television series.

I started watching the series on the CW, but life and a wonky DVR left me playing catch up all the time. Now that Black Lightning is on Netflix, I’ve finally had a chance to become current…and it’s still a really excellent series.

The DCU on CW is embedded in the gritty hyperrealism that I’ve never much loved about modern American comics but, in the way that it feels very like the long shadows of Tim Burton and Frank Miller in Batwoman, it works for Black Lightning.

High school Principal Jefferson Pierce has retired as the superhero Black Lightning as the story begins. What starts as a drug war, becomes a war against an oppressive government. Along the way, we’re introduced to enemies and allies, of course. Among the allies are Pierce’s daughters, Anissa and Jennifer, who also develop super powers.  It is Anissa, Thunder, I want to focus on here.

Anissa Pierce is a lesbian when the series begins, She has a girlfriend. She’s out to her family. That’s it. She’s out and as the story goes on, her sexuality is never once a point of contention (except for in on an alternate Earth, but this is DC and they can’t help themselves.) When Anissa is no longer with her girlfriend, she meets other women, sometimes sleeps with one. Eventually she ends up with another woman, Grace. And please understand that to write this paragraph I had to avoid about a dozen spoilers absolutely NONE of which had to do with Anissa’s sexuality. It’s simply a non-issue.

So, what is an issue? Nothing. It’s a great series that touches on all the buttons that make white people uncomfortable that it can possibly touch in a way that I really appreciate. It’s like a pokefest of “did THIS make you uncomfortable? NO? How about THIS?” and it’s fairly constant which is the fucking point of this particular form of addressing issues, isn’t it. The less this series is “for me,” the more I like it. The cast is almost wholly black, with a few folks who are Asian. There is one white ally guy is always in a support role.  The white people who show up are, with that one exception, cringe-making. Good. We can be all the stereotypes, from confederate flag-waving racists, to Parking Lot Peggy calling the cops on a black woman standing near her vehicle.

Cress Williams and Christine Adams do a bang-up job of playing Pierce and his scientist wife, Lynne, but for me the joy of watching is Nafessa Williams as Anissa/Thunder and my hero, China Anne McClain as Jennifer Pierce/ Lightning. It’s kind of a pun to say she’s incandescent, but seriously, she’s breathtaking. The relationship between the sisters is entirely realistic, as well. Overall superlative writing. I found this interview of Nafessa Williams by Cortney Williams for The Grio, about her role, in which she discusses being able to play an out black women in a loving family. It’s worth the read.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 9
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 9

The things that hurt are supposed to hurt. The things that work best are supposed to work just like that. When there’s love, it’s lovely.

I grew up with Marvel and as I’ve admitted openly, DC has never been my boom, but I have to tell ya, with Batwoman, Thunder and Lightning on their television roster (and yes, I know about Supergirl, just haven’t watched any of it ,) I’m almost tempted to say I like the DCU on CW. ^_^; At least I can say, I like Black Lightning.