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.

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.