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hadesoftheladies · 4 months

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FEMALE MOVIE/TV RECS (PART 7 / YA & COMING OF AGE)

got inspired from a recommendation post so decided to make a list of movies and shows with female-centric stories/female protagonists. since i can't post all of the genres in one post, i'll split it into multiple posts and y'all can save or add to the list as you wish. (disclaimer: i have watched most of these, but i only know about the existence of others. not every movie/show on these lists will be my recommendation. my recommendations will be beneath the list with reasons. also some of these are way better than others in terms of storytelling/performance--which is why i'll list my faves separately):

Common Themes/Tropes:

-Girls fighting with their parents

-Crushes and romance (and love triangles)

-Strong friendships

-Exploring sexuality (most of these have scenes of a sexual nature)

-Finding herself (or learning how to grow up)

-A lot of (oftentimes comedic) blunders

-Enemies/rivals to lovers

-Girls getting up to no good (or girls getting up to good but getting derailed)

ONES I HAVEN'T WATCHED:

Darby and The Dead

Girlhood

Blood & Water

Eighth Grade

I Am Not Okay With This

Skate Kitchen

The Sisterhood of The Travelling Pants

Ladybird

We Are Lady Parts

ONES I'D RECOMMEND

Derry Girls (9/10) (GOATED SHOW!)

Bottoms (9/10) (hilarious and insane in the best ways!)

Paper Girls (7/10) (the chaos that happens when adult you meets preteen you)

Everything Now (8/10) (actually deals with eating disorders appropriately, the most humanizing teen show i've ever seen)

Booksmart (8/10)(a calmer version of Bottoms, but still pretty unhinged and witty)

PERSONAL NOTES

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is the more sober version of But I'm A Cheerleader, where two lesbians get sent to conversion therapy camps. I found both entertaining and refreshing, full of nuance and oftentimes clever about the writing. The performances were also quite good.

I remember My First Summer being bittersweet, but I think there was one scene that made me a little antsy (because the girls in this are pretty young). If it was done tastefully is better left interpreted by those who decide to watch it.

Do Revenge is a whole bag of everything. Mean Girls meets Bottoms. Funny, cruel and unhinged (yet also a little sweet). It was overall fun stuff.

Skate Kitchen has a spin-off show by HBO called Betty.

I barely remember the one episode of Blood & Water I watched, but I know there were things I found to raunchy too be tasteful, yet there was also quite a bit that was still pretty solid and sweet. Not sure I can recommend because I don't know enough except it's about sisters.

If you like sweet and simple teen love stories, Rafiki and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love are right up your alley.

I only watched one season of Never Have I Ever to emotionally support my sister who had started it. I have never felt such visceral second-hand embarrassment in my LIFE.

First Kill is Romeo and Juliet with vampires and monster hunters. I liked the actors/actresses but you can tell that the budget for this show wasn't that big. If you like Warrior Nun, though, you may like First Kill.

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wen-kexing-apologist · 2 months

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Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

For those of you who don’t know, I decided to run the gauntlet of @bengiyo’s queer cinema syllabus, which is comprised of 9 units. I have completed four of the units (here is my queer cinema syllabus round up post with all the films I’ve watched and written about so far). It is time for me to make my way through Unit 5- Lesbians, which includes the following films: The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Bound (1996), Water Lilies (2007), Saving Face (2004), D.E.B.S. (2004), Set It Off (1996), The Handmaiden (2016), Carol (2015), Imagine Me and You (2005), Two of Us (2019), Rafiki (2018), and The Color Purple (1985).

Today I will be talking about

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) dir. Maria Maggenti

[Runtime: 1:34 , Watched on: Netflix, Language: English]

Summary: Randy cuts class to run her aunt’s gas station. Evie’s the popular girl at school. When the two meet, they discover love, trouble- and themselves.

Cast: - Laurel Holloman as Randy Dean - Nicole Ari Parker as Evie Roy

Well, the Lesbians unit is already off to a great start with this film. Watching this movie was oh so very much fun and I am very happy that we were getting movies with this many sapphics in it, it’s a rare treat, at least on my end.

It was a very interesting piece of media to start with after Heartbreak Alley because nothing too terrible happens in the movie itself, but the film is not a bubble type of film where homophobia and the consequences of being queer don’t exist. Randy and her family were especially impacted by it, we are just tuning in to a time in their life where they’ve come out the other end of the truly terrible life moments.

So when Evie shows up, wealthy, sheltered (at least from the consequences of being queer), and initially unaware of her own sexuality we get to see all the ways in which Evie can be brave because she doesn’t know any better and Randy can be brave because she does know what can happen and tries anyway. It’s taking me back through the Race, Class, and Disability unit a little bit in the way the movie shows all the freedoms and restraints that come with Evie and Randy’s respective positionalities in the world.

Evie isn’t scared of holding Randy’s hand at the diner because she doesn’t believe that someone would beat them up for it. Randy has just gotten over the initial fear of holding hands with a girl she likes in public when the waitress comes over and interrupts the moment and Evie has to be the one to make the second attempt at holding hands in public at the diner.

I love the little nods towards that line, the way that Randy wears her Act Up shirts to school and people are able to clock her, but she still tells Evie that she was seeing a married woman, and Randy sees that as coming out to someone (which it is) and Randy tells her aunts that she came out to someone at school and is congratulated for it because you never really stop coming out and it can be a big deal or a small one every single time.

Randy’s only friend is Frank, another queer kid at school, and Evie’s got three friends we see her with most of the time who are all straight women generally uncomfortable with Randy as a person and especially grossed out by the thought of Evie and Randy hanging out, much less dating/being in love with each other. I was definitely worried initially when Evie’s friends started talking about Randy that she would get quiet, or relent, or play along with her friend group. I have to say that was probably one of my most favorite parts of the film, that Evie didn’t do that. Evie spoke up against her friends, she defended Randy time and time again, and maybe it’s the sheltered aspects of her life that allow her to just come right out and tell her friends, after they were already being so homophobic, that she was in love with Randy and they could simply stop being friends with her if they had a problem with that.

And in fact, Evie’s friends do walk away, and Evie is left alone in a diner because she told her friends she loved a woman. And she’s allowed to be upset about that, and Randy is also allowed to be like “yeah, I could have told you that” about it because, again, she knows all that there is to lose by being out and clockable.

You can see it in the way she handles conflict, that Ari presses her against the wall, and grabs her by the scruff of her shirt, and threatens to kill her for seeing his wife, and while it is hilarious that Regina is just standing there unfazed, hitting him with a fly swatter until he lets go, Randy just standing there with her neck red from being assaulted, holds popsicles to her neck and immediately lies to Evie about what she just experienced. In fact, if I recall correctly, Randy never once breathes a word of that encounter to Evie, even though they are a couple, and Evie cares about Randy. But why would you tell the freshly minted queer you were preoccupied with being threatened for your entanglement with another man’s wife?

There were lots of little things that I loved about this movie, especially as they related to the home. That Evie is there in a big house, with just her mother, refusing to talk about her feelings around her father in a relatively silent house cutting straight to the cramped, overcrowded kitchen with four lesbians wriggling around each other trying to get dinner on the table. I love the camera work around Lena when the camera pans slowly down her entire body, when the only thing in frame is essentially just Lena’s tits bouncing around as she does boxing moves. And my absolute favorite, the tops of heads we see passing back and forth and back and forth while Randy and Evie stand perfectly still, holding hands, and talking to Randy’s family the first time that Evie meets them.

gif by @roseillith

I love that they let Randy’s aunts argue about a very present concern (their differing feelings about having Lena in their house) and that that argument is not the be-all-end-all of their relationship. I love that Randy’s biggest issue is not that she is queer, but that she likely will not be able to graduate highschool. I love that Evie’s biggest issue is also not that she is queer, she does not struggle at all with her queer awakening, and that the biggest problem her mother seems to be having is that she left the house a mess when unsupervised for a few days. Which is not to say that her mother will not struggle with the sexuality aspect of it, but that I don’t get a sense that Evie will be kicked out of the house or need to flee it the way that Randy absolutely did when she came to live with her aunt.

Their issues feel very high school, and their romance, and all the drama around it feels very high school, and I think the movie did a good job conveying the messy, shitty, dramatic bullshit we put our families through as teenagers.

Favorite Moment

My absolute favorite moment, hands down, by miles in the film is the fight between Randy’s aunts. And this may end up resulting in essentially two favorite quotes being put down in this post, but I just have to talk about the conversation that Rebecca and Vicky have over an ex-girlfriend that has been staying with them after breaking up with her boyfriend.

I love that this fight has a number of layers to it: one, that Lena is an ex-girlfriend of one part of the lesbian couple and that can definitely wear down some patience from the current partner; two, that they are raising a child that isn’t their own and are adding an additional stressor on top; three, that they do not have the money to really swing another long-term guest; and four, the difference in their life history as queer people is majorly informing the perception of how this is going.

We don’t have only messy lesbians, we have a long-term, established relationship between two people who are doing the thing where they make continuous and active choices to stay together and are talking about the things that are causing tension in their household to try to reach some level of compromise. They are allowed to fight without me having to worry that they are going to try to throw some break up between the adults in Randy’s life into the mix.

This film came out before gay marriage was legal in the United States, but I love that we can understand the depth of the commitment Rebecca and Vicky made to one another, in whatever version of a partnership they have created for themselves with one of the most incredible lines of the film:

Rebecca: “I made a vow that my house would always be open to the people I love. You and I both took that vow when we moved in together. I needed it when I was young. Randy needed it when she moved in with us. Even you needed that once.” Vicky: “No I didn’t.” Rebecca: “No, I guess you didn’t.”

I love the quote because it does speak to the queer experience, my housemate and I are both queer, and we have tried our hardest to make sure that our other queer friends know that our door is open if they need it. We know Randy has been disowned by her mother, we know her aunt must have been raised in some level of similar environment, and it is understandable from Rebecca’s point of view that she and Vicky remain a support and safe haven for wayward queers forever. And how that viewpoint builds on Vicky’s problems with Lena staying with them instead of Lena going home to her mother to get over the break-up. Because if Vicky never had the experiences that Rebecca and Randy had of having nowhere else to go, then I can totally see how it might be harder for her to understand why Lena is staying with them and has been staying for so long.

And I like that Lena is still there at the end of the movie, which indicates to me that Rebecca won that argument and Vicky is at least continuing to tolerate the newest addition to their little queer family.

Favorite Quote

“I don’t want to shock you or anything but I really wanna hold your hand right now. I’ve wanted to hold your hand all day.” // “I’ve held hands with a girl before.” // “Girls like me?” // “I guess not. But what could happen?” // “We’d get the shit beat out of us, that’s all.” // “Just for holding hands? I don’t believe that.” // “God Evie, you are so sheltered.” // “Unshelter me.”

I like that Evie can be brave in this moment expressly because she does not understand what she is putting on the line by being queer in public. But she is turning 18 soon, and she is heading off to college, and she cannot be protected forever, especially not if she wants to be herself, and if she understands her queerness and wants that to be an active part of her life that she doesn’t have to hide, she will learn eventually. And she does, she tells her friends if they have a problem with her being in love with Randy that they can leave. And they do. And if you ask me there is a part of Evie that is saying that only because she doesn’t think they actually will, and that she is surprised when they actually do get up and go. But she pays the price and she is sad about it, but not remorseful. Never remorseful about being open with the people that she cares about and losing them as a result.

Score

8/10. I was not a huge fan of the acting in a lot of this, and the script was not the strongest. But there were some really great moments that felt so true to form and I am endlessly glad that this film exists.

#bengiyo queer cinema syllabus #queer cinema syllabus #the incredibly true adventure of two girls in love #the incredibly true adventure of two girls in love (1995)#unit 5: lesbians

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