Just saw Claire of the Moon. Straight Claire meets lesbian Noel at a writer's conference and the two of them are irritated by and then attracted to each other. Within the first five minutes I asked the Spousal Unit just how long this movie was, because Christ Almighty, this movie is lesbian. Lots of sighing, lingering scenes of people looking out of windows at scenery and brooding on the beach and talky talky talky girl-bonding. Just how long is this writer's conference anyway?
The movie was made in 1992 and features delightfully atrocious eighties-influenced fashion. With glee I noticed Claire smokes the same pretentious cigarette I remember a friend smoking in high school. By some trick of time and space, it scans as an appreciably more dated movie than Desert Hearts that appeared some years earlier. I did an online search and came across an interesting review that implied Claire of the Moon was the L Word of its time, this utter crap that you hated yourself for watching, but watched anyway because it had lesbians in it. A sobering thought for anyone trying to produce contemporary media.
As a final note, a whole thesis could be built around the fact that the character niche typically held by the gay male character in straight movies (sympathetic and interested in the heroine's romantic troubles) is held by the bulldyke who runs the writer's conference. Chew on that one, gender theorists.
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