Forbidden Love

"The whole world was full of stupid myths about women."

That comment is made by one of the interviewees in the documentary Forbidden Love. Stupid, pulp-mentality myth about lesbians — and women in general — is what the film successfully exposes in its recreation of cheap novels and sexual realities from the 1950s.

Produced for the National Film Board of Canada, Forbidden Love is a fascinating study of the pop culture and poignant realities of that eta. It begins with the lurid gay novels that filled paperback racks during die waning years of the Eisenhower age. Interspersed between the close-ups of melodramatic book covers are interviews with women who survived the mentally -— and sometimes physically — violent repression of the period. And guess what? Those women are still queer, and quite happy about, thank you very much.

The 1950s was a seriously screwy decade. The fact that these women, or any lesbians, survived it intact is a great tribute to their sheer fortitude.