Lavender movies
I haven’t heard of the term “lavender” media before, but thanks to Xaya and this month’s Bear Blog Carnival, I now have a reason to write about some queer movies “that made me feel things”. I don’t seek out, or avoid, queer movies, as I am looking for good movies and good movies don’t require a specific target audience. It might mean different things for different people, but I believe good movies can evoke something universal in everyone and even having vastly different experiences with the same movie can bring us closer in understanding our different life experiences.
For a long time I had a hard time with romance in movies. Often the chemistry felt fake and unconvincing. A Hong Kong director named Wong Kar-wai changed that when I saw his 1994 Chungking Express, where he manages to invoke a great authenticity with the chemistry between the characters unlike anything I have seen before. Wong Kar-wai has several movies that explore relationships that for one reason or another aren’t really meant to be, and in this context I will focus on Happy Together from 1997. It is about two men in a relationship and despite the title, they aren’t really happy together. It is a rather dysfunctional relationship, but there is still plenty of warmth and tenderness between them. What I liked about this particular movie was that doesn’t seem to be a main point that it depicts a gay relationship, because there is something very universal in how it displays a need for control and extreme jealousy between them. However, it did portray a couple dynamics that I haven't seen depicted with a typical male/female relationship on film before. They both have very aggressive sides, sometimes violent, but it never feels threatening for any of them. In that sense, showing a dysfunctional gay relationship does give a unique angle that would be difficult to convey in the same way with a traditional heterosexual relationship.
In a completely different ballpark I want to highlight But I’m a Cheerleader from 1999 which is a satirical comedy drama about a teenage girl who gets sent to “conversion” camp for being lesbian by her conservative parents. It is a movie with a very clear message that of course it is ridiculous to try an convert people away from their sexuality, and the satire is filled with mockery of the Christian conservative world view. First of all it is hilarious, filled with absurd “conversion” scenes and sexual innuendo. But even though it is a comedy, the director clearly takes the subject matter seriously (she is also a lesbian herself), with sweet and genuine depictions of vulnerability, intimacy and growth that is universal for anyone who is or has been a teenager. It also has plenty to say about stereotypical gender roles, society expectations of woman and universal questions of figuring out who you are.
Switching to something more serious and quite depressing, I would like to say a bit about Mysterious Skin from 2004. Not directly a queer movie as such, as it is more about dealing with repressed memory of sexual abuse, where we follow a two young men dealing with various issues in their young adult lives. They find each other again and find a connection through their shared trauma. It is rather bleak and depressing movie just by its subject matter, but the director has chosen to depict everything with no filters from the boys perspective in almost dreamlike lens of bright colours. It is both unsettling and comforting, from the fact that the two young men shows so much compassion for each other. I don't think I have seen any movie depicting two young men comforting each other in such a tender manner, where it still felt so authentic. That is way too rare to see in movies, where any sort of tenderness between two men is often just played of as a dumb gay joke.
I am going to wrap this up with a Danish movie from 2020, A Perfectly Normal Family (En helt almindelig familie). It is sort of an autobiographical story by the director Malou Reymann about when she as a child in early 2000s had to live through her parent’s divorce. With the added caveat that her father wanted to become a woman. It is told from the young girl’s perspective and how she experiences the whole ordeal. Having to deal with parents divorce is one thing, but her father’s transitioning isn’t exactly making things easier and forms a very interesting unique perspective on gender transitions. It is important to note that is a story told from the perspective of the daughter, not necessarily a very representative portrayal of trans woman, but I still found the movie to be incredibly moving and - again like with every other movie here - showing something universal about how people define their identity.
Which concludes my experiences with lavender media that made me feel things.