Lesbian Film Spotlight: The Bad-But-Bad
Lesbian Film Spotlight: The Bad-But-Bad
On the Nicole Conn Cinematic Universe
This is the Sunday edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. Plus, this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet. If you like this type of thing, subscribe! A note: this post is too long to properly fit in an e-mail, so you might consider reading it on-site.
Editors note: The following contains major spoilers for the films A Perfect Ending and Elena Undone.
When searching through the archives of lesbian film, one inevitably encounters films that have few, if any, redeeming qualities – apart from perhaps the aforementioned lesbianism. Indeed, there are many lesbian films that could reasonably be considered “bad” films (although that term itself is, of course, entirely subjective and loaded with decades worth of baggage about taste culture and intellectual superiority). As I’ve written about before in my piece about “Bad-But-Good” lesbian films, sometimes such films do have just enough endearing qualities to make them worth watching. Others, not so much.
Because I am endlessly curious about every aspect of sapphic pop culture and perhaps also a little masochistic, today I’ve decided to delve into that other category – The Bad-But-Bad. There are numerous films that I could have chosen to look at here, but I decided to focus on two that I was already familiar with. (These films also happen to be streaming on Netflix and Hulu, respectively). Both of these films – A Perfect Ending and Elena Undone – are directed by Nicole Conn, a lesbian director known for making lesbian romance movies. As such, they are not “bad” in the sense of being offensive to or exploitative of queer women (unless you are offended by cinematic cliches), but rather are simply not very good movies. And while it might be more fun to rag on a straight man for making a bad lesbian movie, most lesbian movies are actually not made by straight men, particularly when you include low-budget, independent films.
A Perfect Ending, which came out in 2012, follows Paris (Jessica Clark), a high-priced escort with a tragic past, and Rebecca (Barbara Niven), a rich, middle-aged housewife, who, wait for it...has never had an orgasm. If the reason these two characters meet isn’t immediately obvious to you, maybe you need to watch more Lifetime movies or read more fanfiction. (Speaking of Lifetime movies, Barbara Niven is in fact primarily known for her work in Hallmark and Lifetime properties, which actually makes sense considering the tone of this film).
If I recall correctly, the reason I originally watched this film years ago was exclusively for Jessica Clark, who was a popular lesbian actor at the time (and still is, I suppose). Clark used to host a vlog series called Lesbian Love with her now-ex-wife Lacey Stone where they answered questions about love and relationships, and she also played the naked, blood-soaked vampire goddess Lillith in True Blood. (More recently she starred in the lesbian holiday rom-com Season of Love, which I briefly touched upon in my aforementioned Bad-But-Good piece). None of this has anything to do with the plot of the film itself of course, but A Perfect Ending starring a popular out lesbian actress (as does Elena Undone), is undoubtedly one of the film’s biggest draws.
But, back to the plot of the film. The film opens with seemingly unrelated shots of ink dripping on paper and fancy statues in a garden, and contains perhaps the most aggressive use of rack focus I have ever seen. The first thing we learn about Rebecca is that she is dying of cancer and has a terrible (and racist) husband. Over drinks one night with her lesbian friends (which I am perplexed as to how she knows in the first place) one of her friends (who was presumably straight before this?) is raving about her new hot butch girlfriend and how she is convincing her to get nipple rings. Our Rebecca is very freaked out by this scary lesbian and radiates WASP-y homophobia. However, later that evening Rebecca tells her lesbian friends that she has never had an orgasm before, and they are understandably shocked. (See below).
This leads to her redheaded lesbian friend (played by British lesbian actress Mary Jane Wells, who also shows up in Elena Undone), suggesting that she “take a lover,” but not a man lover, a “woman lover.” Said friend then calls up her cousin, Valentina, (played by 70s icon Morgan Fairchild), who runs a call-girl service. This, of course, is how Rebecca meets Paris. It is also important to mention here that Valentina organizes her call-girls’ schedules using...barbie dolls? This is a fact that I find very unnerving but simply do not have the capacity to unpack at this moment.
Paris, we find out, is an escort who “secretly” wants to be an artist, and for some reason became an escort in the first place because her husband tragically died in a car accident. (I have no idea what the correlation between these two things is). Of course, we are not privy to this information right away, and instead get many melodramatic shots of Paris curled up on the floor in a white room, presumably to illustrate her inner turmoil. On Rebecca’s part, she can’t go through with it when she meets Paris in a hotel room, and it isn’t until their third meeting that they even kiss, after which Rebecca gets so flustered she runs out the door, dropping her purse on the floor and nearly falling over in the process. (During all this we also learn that Rebecca’s husband once tried – and maybe succeeded – to rape her own daughter, which adds a perplexing and frankly unnecessary plotline that I sorely wish was left out).
About an hour into the movie Rebecca finally gets what she came for, and at this point the film becomes something like if the Hallmark channel made soft-core porn, interlaced as it is with orgasm-induced, tear-stricken emotional revelations. After all of this time in the sheets, Rebecca tells Paris she loves her and we finally learn Paris’ tragic backstory. Shortly thereafter, we get an alarmingly quick transition from Rebecca telling Paris she’s dying of cancer to Rebecca’s own funeral. (And by a quick transition I mean there literally is no transition). At the funeral, we learn Rebecca tried to make sure her daughter had equal rights to her assets upon her death, which I assume implies she was trying to make up for the fact that she couldn’t protect her from being raped by her father when she was younger? Again, a truly out-of-left-field plotline that has no business being a part of this movie.
The last scene of the film takes place at Paris’ first gallery show, which she was presumably able to put on because of the money Rebecca left her prior to her death. The last line of the film is someone announcing the title of Paris’ central art piece at the gallery show (which depicts a semi-nude Rebecca), which is, wait for it...un petit mort. A painting named after a woman who experienced her first orgasm and then promptly died of cancer being called that is so deranged that I almost love it. (Almost). Really, that last scene tells you everything you need to know about this movie, which is that it is melodramatic, drowning in symbolism, and full of cliches. Basically, it’s not really worth watching unless you specifically enjoy that particular type of bad.
Elena Undone, which came out in 2010, does not fare much better. The film focuses on the titular Elena (Necar Zadegan), who is a repressed pastor’s wife, and Peyton (Traci Dinwiddie), a successful lesbian writer. Elena’s pastor husband wants her to get pregnant again, Peyton’s mother has just died, and all of this melodrama is narrated by Elena’s “love guru” friend Tyler, who waxes on about soulmates and twin flames over a mind-numbingly saccharine score. Like A Perfect Ending, Elena Undone features an out lesbian actress in one of the lead roles – in this case, Dinwiddie – which is surely a draw of the film. Dinwiddie has also starred in several other lesbian films (such as Raven’s Touch, which I have seen and actually kind of enjoyed), and her very lesbian presence does I think add something charming to the film.
After meeting several times – first, at an adoption seminar, and then at one of Tyler’s matchmaking events – the two women become friends. They become close, drinking wine on the deck and sharing intimate details about their lives, as sapphics do. Then, because Elena is a photographer – and photography is canonically lesbian – Elena takes Peyton’s new author headshots, which of course becomes an excuse for loaded touching and intimate gazes. Things become more intense between them, and Peyton says she wants to stop seeing Elena because she can’t take it any longer. Elena says that she does not want that, and shortly thereafter Elena’s pastor husband does a homophobic sermon under the auspices of appeasing the church’s funders.
Finally, we get to the scene this film is known for – the record-breaking kiss. In what I assume was some kind of marketing strategy, Conn decided with this film that she wanted to break the record for the longest on-screen kiss in cinema history – and so she did. (As far as I can tell, the earlier record was held either by 1941’s You’re In The Army Now or 1942’s Notorious, neither of which were actually continuous kisses. However, the kiss listed as the longest on The Guinness World Record website is from a 2005 film called Kids In America, though this kiss apparently occurs during the end credits, so perhaps that is where the distinction lies).
They accomplish this marathon kiss (which is in fact, one continuous kiss) partially by talking while kissing, and by that I mean whispering nearly into each other’s mouths while their lips are still touching. In dramatic lesbian fashion, Elena whispers things to Peyton about her lips, such as “They’re so soft. Soft like velvet.” Considering what we know about her crusty pastor husband, I imagine that might not be an exaggeration. Several scenes later they finally have sex, which only occurs because Elena repeatedly demands “Peyton, make love to me” until she acquiesces.
Then, things start to break down. Elena and Peyton get into a fight about Elena’s ungrateful husband, Elena’s son and his girlfriend find out about the affair; everyone cries. For some reason, Elena’s son is so upset by this revelation that he feels the need to steal a bottle of vodka from a convenience store and sit on the ground crying and drinking. After all of this, Elena cries a lot and ruins her makeup, and Peyton day drinks by the pool. Later on, a homophobic little snitch catches them kissing in the park and tattles on them, so they break it off for good.
Six months later, Peyton has just completed paperwork to adopt a baby when she runs into Elena in the park. When Peyton sees that Elena is pregnant, she calls her a “selfish whore” because she thinks she’s been sleeping with her husband this whole time. (Elena had previously promised that she hadn’t “touched” her husband since they started their affair). We find out that what actually happened was while getting divorced Elena got pregnant with her best friend Tyler’s baby because she had been struggling with infertility for so long. Long story short, Peyton and Elena wind up together, Elena has the baby, and they live happily ever after as a family. (Pastor husband is nowhere in sight).
Ultimately, I think Elena Undone is a better film than A Perfect Ending – mostly because of the believable chemistry between the two leads and no one dying of cancer at the end – and I did enjoy it slightly more than I thought I would. One of the most glaring flaws of films of this sort is their lack of interesting or necessary secondary characters, which often have the effect of taking you out of what is (sometimes) an engaging dynamic between the two leads. Apart from the aforementioned Mary Jane Wells – who appears as the best friend in both films and who I actually enjoyed – most of the secondary characters in these films are frankly, insufferable. More to the point, both films employ a trope that I find bothersome in lesbian films, which is the narrative of a woman who leaves her terrible husband and starts a lesbian affair. It’s not that there aren’t women out there with terrible husbands, but rather that their terrible-ness sometimes seems to serve as a catalyst for these women starting lesbian relationships in the first place, which can tend to undermine the truth of their feelings.
Nevertheless, there is a place for movies like this in the world – Hallmark-like films such as these will always fill a particular niche – and I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t exist at all. I know I’ve (somewhat crudely) categorized these films as “bad,” but they’re not entirely bad. They do employ out lesbian and queer actors who might not otherwise get hired in lead roles, and a lesbian director having been able to make half a dozen explicitly lesbian films is in some sense heartening, at least.
Certainly, there are people that like both these films (I found some very amusing reviews on IMDB, such as the one above), and I have no beef with them even though we do not agree. Perhaps one of the dissonances here (at least for me) is that the women who make and star in these films are of a different generation than those of us who came of age in the 2010s when these films premiered. I imagine that at the time when directors like Nicole Conn got their start, the void that lesbian films had to fill was vast. (Conn’s first film, Claire of the Moon – which I have not seen – was released in 1992. Desert Hearts, often considered the first semi-mainstream lesbian film in America, came out in 1985). However, what these films don’t do, is fill that void with anything resembling innovation or substance. To be fair, it’s not actually unreasonable to call Nicole Conn an auteur – all of her films do have a recognizable quality to them that I think can be attributed to her particular visual and narrative style. It’s just that this style is not very good. While I do sometimes like to trouble the distinction between “bad” and “good” when it comes to pop culture, particularly when it relates to undervalued or underrepresented forms of media, there’s simply no way around this one.
Welcome to this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet.
A couple of weeks ago, my favorite, kind of silly women-in-the-workplace show The Bold Type had its series finale. It was anti-climactic but did include a sapphic happy ending. Also in streaming content news, the first film in a new horror series on Netflix came out last week. The first installment in Leigh Janiak’s R.L. Stine adaption is called Fear Street Part One: 1994, and it follows a teen girl and her group of friends - including her ex-girlfriend – as they fight a powerful witch that has taken over their town. It’s horror with lesbians in it and has an entirely 90s-alt soundtrack, so obviously I enjoyed it. (The second installment of the series came out July 9, and the third comes out the following Friday).
Last week at Cannes, Jodie Foster received an honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement and gave a speech where she thanked her wife Alexandra, whom she called her “partner in pajamas.” This harkens back to the time they virtually “attended” The Golden Globes in fancy pajamas. This was a big moment because Foster has previously been famously private about her personal life, so seeing her openly adoring her wife is wonderful.
Earlier in the week, Megan Fox was profiled in InStyle, which included a YouTube video and a written interview. In the video, Fox talks about being a “bi-icon” (which she definitely is), and about how incredible of an experience Jennifer’s Body was. The profile itself is definitely worth a read, as Fox explains how unfairly she was treated for the better part of her career. The profile also features an incredible photoshoot in which Fox is bathed in “bisexual lighting.”
On Thursday, JoJo Siwa celebrated her six-month anniversary with her girlfriend, which included an unhinged snack table. Power couple Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were profiled in Nike, and Zoe Kravitz was gallivanting around New York City being flirty and bisexual. Valerie Complex also did an interview with legendary lesbian filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, which you can read here.
Also on Thursday, it was the 1-year anniversary of the death of beloved Glee actor Naya Rivera. Her death was very upsetting to many lesbians and sapphics because her portrayal of Santana Lopez was such a revelation for so many, and Naya herself always made it a point to stand up for and champion her queer fans. She continues to be missed.
In news that has literally altered my entire worldview, it was revealed this week that Legally Blonde was originally supposed to end with Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair’s characters getting together. According to a new 20-year-anniversary oral history of the film, the initial ending of the film saw Elle and Vivian sitting on the beach in Hawaii, drinking martinis and holding hands. However, according to the screenwriters of the film – that ending was never written or shot. So what was originally a shocking revelation is perhaps just…not true? I will be sure to update you all next week should any more shocking developments in this story occur.
That’s all for this week, folks! Stay tuned for next week’s edition. I will leave you with an additional photo of Megan Fox.
