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.

Claire of the Moon

Writer’s block is a terrible thing. Especially if you insist on filming it. It’s even worse if the filmmaker’s concept of writing is a bag of clichés she picked up, presumably, in college lit classes. Unfortunately, said concept is the foundation for the lesbian romance film Claire of the Moon.

Trisha Todd plays Claire Jabrowski, a young, straight and sexually promiscuous writer who achieved success with her book, Life Can Ruin Your Hair. Claire’s hair is fine, but she’s having trouble working on her next book. So off she goes to a writers’ retreat on the Oregon coast that specializes in feminist politics and gorgeous shorelines.

Unfortunately, the situation isn’t as idyllic as the setting. Claire runs into problems right away with her roommate. Of course, the fact that she has a roommate is the primary problem: people go to writers’ retreat to retreat – not to socialize.

The roomie is Dr. Noel Benedict (Karen Trumbo), a psychiatrist/author who told The Naked Truth. The doctor (who is clothed for most of the movie) has an approach to psychology that consists of broad generalizations. She is attractive, gay and a driven professional. (She also keeps referring to Oprah Winfrey as if they just had lunch.)

The two women take an instant dislike to each other. In the logic of cinema, of course, this means that they will become lovers. It takes the entire film, however, for the characters to catch on to what the audience knew 15 minutes into the movie.

Meanwhile, back at the retreat, none of the women spend much time writing. Instead, they gather frequently to harangue each other about sexual politics. In an interesting twist, it isn’t men who are villains of their arguments – it’s straight women. Maggie, who runs the retreat, is especially hard on them. She has the personality of Norman Mailer and bullies the other women with her stridently radical line. She’s also one of the few engaging characters in the film.

The remaining characters are one-dimensional stereotypes: there is the man-obsessed Southern belle who writes romance novels filled with throbbing male parts, a valley girl New Ager and a nearly brainless housewife.

It’s fortunate that the film’s writer-director is Nicole Conn. A male director would be shot (deservedly) for such characterizations of women, gay or straight.

The closest Claire of the Moon comes to irony is in its peculiar predominance of straight sex scenes. Despite its simplistic version of lesbian-feminist politics, the film treats men as sex objects. Go figure.