"Oui, d'autant des chimères!"
As a film, The Reader asks us to grapple with the very notion of love. What is it? What does it look like? How does it manifest? And can we know it when we see it? What happens when something clashes with our perception of love? And more importantly, what happens when something clashes with... Continue Reading →
When I first heard about The Reader in 2008, I somehow dreamed up that it was a horror film about a psychic tarot reader. I was wrong. I’m not sure where exactly I got that idea but when I saw the film for the first time, I was glad to have been so grossly mistaken. The film... Continue Reading →
I’ve seen Losing Chase a hundred times but this past weekend I found myself in the mood to watch something familiar and comforting. And now I feel called to write a little something because… well, why not? Helen Mirren and Kyra Sedgwick are rather brilliant in this little film. Mirren plays a free spirited housewife (Chase) on the... Continue Reading →
Each character in Olivia is grappling with a universal experience—whether it be the hope of self-discovery, the determination to move forward, or the fear of being left behind—all through the lens of queer womanhood. Overcoming the challenges of these experiences is integral to their survival, and what unfolds in the film is a series of bittersweet mistakes, difficult choices, and broken promises that add such layered nuance to this story that queer women are still drawn to it today.
The core issue in Olivia, save for Olivia’s love sickness, is that neither Julie nor Cara are particularly careful about how and where they seek love and validation. Both rely on being exalted—we see this play out in their relationships with the girls at the Les Avons.
Upon arriving at Les Avons, Olivia is promptly informed that pupils typically fall into two camps: Julistes (those who prefer Julie) and Caristes (those who prefer Cara). Several students make bets about which camp Olivia will fall into, perhaps unaware that she, most of all, shouldn’t have a preference.
Since its restoration and re-release in 2019, Olivia has attracted new eyes, new opinions. Film enthusiasts, eager to whip up a review upon first viewing, have all written of the film’s predatory, unspeakable—and today, incomprehensible—queer love between a boarding school’s headmistress and her sixteen-year-old student.
Olivia. It’s a name that lovers of queer cinema have long heard echoing in the depths of their ears. And for good reason: the velvety voice of Edwige Feuillère is hard to forget. For nearly a century, that voice has elicited in audiences a shiver of the spine, a flutter of the heart, a quiver of the legs. It’s a voice that permeates the 1951 film in which she speaks this name and does to its target much the same as it has done to the countless women (and men, of course) who’ve come to know it.
A few months ago, a colleague asked me why film is so important to me. Caught off guard by the question, I gave a jumbled response, alluding to the insight one can glean about historical events by the way a film depicts them. I’m not entirely sure why I offered this explanation for my investment... Continue Reading →
It’s likely that few of you have heard of or even seen Bruno Barreto’s Reaching for the Moon. Even less likely is your knowledge of the love affair between American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares which is unfortunate because these women were two of the greatest minds of their time.... Continue Reading →
Des Chimères 