Archive for the Live Action Category


Olivia, Directed by Jacqueline Audry

October 18th, 2020

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 IsabelleOlivia 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.





The Carmilla Movie

October 11th, 2020

Tough call today, I’m torn between reviewing this and A Lily Blooms in Another World, but this has been on my “to-review on Sunday” list for a long time, so I’m sticking with plan. Tune in tomorrow, because l have a lot to say about Ameco Kaeruda’s newest LN.

Today I am, at long last, revisiting the entertaining finish to the entertaining webseries, Carmilla. (Season 1 and Season 2  have been reviewed here on Okazu.) At the end of the webseries, creators took their spin on Sheridan LeFanu’s vampire novel Carmilla, soaked in H.P. Lovecraftian-style dread horror and sprinkled lightly with post-Buffy, the Vampire Slayer humor and shenanigans to the big screen for one last adventure.

In The Carmilla Movie, after defeating the ancient horror that lay below protagonist Laura’s college, formerly-immortal vampire Carmilla, is now once again human.  Only…something seems to be up with that. The movie will explore Carmilla’s past, and also dredge up the fears of Laura, Perry and La Fontaine and will, predictably give Carmilla some good, gothic self-loathing time to consider her evil past, as they race to help unsettled ghosts pass through the veil, defeat an obsessed victim of Carmilla’s and decide, ultimately, whether Carmilla ought to remain a human, or return to being a vampire, forever.

Outside the video-log format of the original webseries, the story flails a bit. Once the camera is off, we get to see the running around and shouting that was previously assumed in the webseries…and I’m not sure it makes the story better. This is not a series that needs a bigger budget, or a larger screen, but the movie held together well, without losing any of the qualities that made the webseries fun to watch. We still see all the characters as we’ve grown to know and admire them, with gloating baddies, arcane rituals and items, and a fresh hell for us all to face.  I especially liked that Carmilla‘s undead reclaim their gothic roots. There are no sparkly vamps here, just the diaphanous shifts of modern Victorian cosplay.

A perfect watch for grey and gloomy Sunday in October…which it just *happens* to be today here as I write. ^_^

Cinematography – 7
Story –  8 Creative, if not brilliant
Characters – 9
LGBTQ – 10
Service – Not really?

Overall – 9

Honestly….I think LeFanu would have loved this series.

There’s a clear lineage here:  LeFanu and  Stoker have a baby called Buffy. Lovecraft has a fey child called Nightvale, Nightvale and Buffy have a very queer child…Carmilla. ^_^

 





Therese and Isabelle

September 27th, 2020

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.





Rafiki, directed by Wanuri Kahiu

August 16th, 2020

Rafiki directed by Wanuri Kahiu, is a beautiful film about two Kenyan women in love in a county where homosexuality is illegal, and Church, State and Society are violently opposed to queer people living happily. Nominated at Cannes, Kahiu’s award-winning vision is timeless, with overnotes of Romeo and Juliet. “Two houses alike in dignity…” and all that, but with some deeper messaging.

Kena Mwaura is one of the guys but she, like most tomboys, is not at all one of the guys. Ziki Okemi is a very pretty girl, whose father just happens to be running against Kena’s father for the local County Assembly position. Kena and Ziki fall in love. It’s charming and sweet. You watch them wanting to cocoon them away from the derision and harm that you just know is waiting for them out in the real world. When it lands, all we can do it watch and wait…and hope.

As we watch, it becomes clear that there are several layers of storytelling unfolding. There is the clear message that the demons are in the haters, not the hated. The anger, the intolerance, the disdain, the rejection, the violence, that is where the demonic influence is. Love is…love.  Love brings joy and wholeness, but hate makes us bilious,and causes us to hurt others…which one is the one that is holy, really. It’s not subtle. Church, State and Society all look like the jerks that they are.

And there is the equally unsubtle story about two fathers, for whom wives and daughters are symbolic tools, not actual humans. Thankfully, here, the families are given room to grow, and both fathers and mothers change, at least a little. 

But there’s one more layer and this one really struck me hard – the mean smallness of society’s vision for what women should want and how men and women become enraged when younger generations just refuse to see that mean, small, barely human existence as “enough.” Blacksta, Kena’s friend, is honestly confused when Kena doesn’t seem interested in becoming his wife. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?” (At which point, I thought, in story after story after story, the villagers remain gormless. Why would Cinderella ever want something different, or Mu Lan?) The fact is, that the smallest and meanest of visions for what we “should” want is still prevalent. In the movie press kit, Kahiu says,

“While filming,we challenged deep-rooted cynicism about same-sex relations among the actors, crew and continue to do so with friends, relatives and larger society. RAFIKI brings to the forefront conversations about love, choice and freedom. Not only freedom to love but also the freedom to create stories.”

It was that theme of freedom I loved best about Rafiki. These themes were addressed at a price. In a 2019 interview with the Guardian, Kahiu speaks of the harassment she has faced, sometimes from people she loves.

The censors were not at all happy with Kahiu’s vision, either. “They felt it was too hopeful. They said if I changed the ending to show her [the main character Kena] looking remorseful, they would give me an 18 rating.” Kahiu declined and so, as the final framed play, Kena and Ziki do not end up dead, or some other more traditionally depressing ending. I will rejoice when “death or marriage” is so completely confusing an idea to young queer folks, since not having a happily-ever-after ended would be unthinkable. ^_^

Samantha Mugatsia’s Kena is fantastic. You just want to invite her over to kick back and let her relax a bit, and while it took me longer than Kena to trust Sheila Munyiva’s Ziki, I think she did a fantastic job of acting.

Overall a very solid movie. A few weeks ago, I reported that this movie had been put on Youtube officially, but I find that that link is no longer active. The movie is available to rent for a mere $1.99 on Amazon Video, which is where I watched it.  Ultimately, it’s a story of hope and for that alone, it’s absolutely worth watching. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

From a western perspective, there was nothing censorship-worthy, but Kahiu had to sue her own country’s government to get the film shown in Kenya…she was successful and it did play for a week. With luck we’ll be seeing more of her work in the near future for Amazon and a movie called The Thing About Jellyfish.





Wynnona Earp on Netflix

July 26th, 2020

Wynonna Earp is ridiculous, it’s gross and violent (the very first scene involves someone’s tongue being cut out), it frequently makes no sense, it piles one plot complication on top of another, without resolving it, or the three previous plot complications before it. Worse, when 99% of the characters are undead, undying or unreal, no bad guy ever just…goes away.  It’s a modern paranormal western with absurd shootouts and some of the most godawful fight choreography I’ve ever seen.

But I kinda like it anyway. ^_^

It helps that several of the characters are openly queer and others are probably queer given the right circumstances. Queerable, if you will.

It also helps that this series, developed by Syfy, now also on Netflix, is so stupendously absurd that I can comfortably watch it with almost no real concern, since by the end of Season 3, at least, pretty much all of the main characters have died at least once and are still with us. It’ll get harder and harder to believe anyone is actually dead and out of the show until Twitter tells me so. ^_^

Descendant of Wyatt Earp, Wynnona, has her whole life struggled under a family curse that, (among other things,) ended up with her killing her father and, later, being sent away to an asylum. The curse is real, and so are all the hellish demons plaguing her family and Wynnona’s only real problem, it turns out, is that she’s perfectly sane and is the Heir of Wyatt’s curse. Wynnona and her sister, Waverly, are joined in their fight by the immortal Doc Holliday, and eventually by a host of adorable misfits and weirdos.

Waverly, a bubbly young woman who taught herself ancient languages in order to be worthy of being the Heir, falls in love with new cop in town, redheaded Nicole Haught. In Season 3, the team gets gay researchers/scientist/whatever they need him to be/generic lab guy Jeremy and then he gets a boyfriend who is also a total whatever they need him to be for that arc, forest ranger, lost boy, twink, Robin.

Ultimately what’s keeping me watching is the vulgarity and the fact that the all the characters, female characters especially, are written with depth, with variety and with skill. Even the bad characters have depth and not just tragic “evil person sad story” depth…although every character does indeed have a tragic backstory.

I was not blown away by this show at first, but I find that it has seriously grown on me and not just because it hasn’t given in to Bury Your Gays. That is to say, it has killed most of the gay characters at least once, but all of the characters have been killed at least once, so that’s not an issue.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 6  CGI effects, batman angles, too close on kisses, horrible fights
Story – Goes from ridiculous to laughable
Character – 8 Inconsistent, but fun
LGBTQ – 9
Service – 3 Some, but fairly sprinkled about

Overall – 8

I’m always on the lookout for a series to half-assedly pay attention to as I work and Wynnona Earp is perfectly suited to mostly ignore. ^_^ But when I do look up, the people are pretty, the gays get to have sex, too, and everyone is permanently not-dead. So, that’s good. The actress playing Waverly, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, has recently come out, which is sweet.

It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer the western, in 2020.