BY FRANCESCA LEWIS

This film was receiving praise before it even went into production. Winner of the Chicago Great Gay Screenplay competition and one of Outfests Scriptwriting Lab participants, writer/director Louise Wadley worked hard to develop this original and entertaining script. Funded by crowdfunding and private investment, this indie endeavor, featuring a story we’d be very unlikely to find in mainstream movies, All About E is a fascinating look at the diversity of Australian life. Spanning urban, suburban and rural settings, with characters from a range of backgrounds, the film is hard to pin down. Even its plot, with shades of crime caper, romance, farcical comedy, road movie and family drama, is not easy to categorize.

“I wanted to mix things up with this film” says Wadley, “and show that as long as the audience is taken care of and they are engaged and care about the characters, they will follow you. As a writer/director I wanted to go from comedy to pathos and make a really entertaining film that is actually about something quite complex.”

Complex indeed! In the opening scenes we are introduced to sexy DJ and womanizer, E. An Arabic Australian woman, her Spanish themed nights are the toast of the hottest gay club in town, as she rules the stage in a Matador outfit. But she longs to change the theme to something more in-keeping with her own Lebanese culture – perhaps an Arabian Nights theme – and is frustrated when her unsavory boss, Johnny refuses this in no uncertain, and racist, terms.

The next morning E and her gay Irish bestie/husband-of-convenience Matt realize she inadvertently brought home a huge bag of cash from the taxi last night. With the idea of opening up their own club in mind, they flee with the money, only finding out once it’s too late that the money belongs to her boss. Having scorned every woman in town, E finds no one is willing to help, and a visit to her parents shows us another, softer side to the woman who seemed to be so confident and in control. E, whose full name is Elmira, was a clarinet prodigy and chose her career in DJ-ing over a promising one in classical music. After Johnny calls to let her know exactly where her money came from, she fears her parents will be in danger if she remains. The only place she can go is deep into the outback, where the girlfriend she betrayed has made a new life. Haunted by memories of how she wronged Trish, E heads to her farm to hide out and make amends.

“The inspiration was born out of a deep frustration of not seeing my Australia represented on screen.” says Wadley, “Where is the multicultural world that is the reality of most Australian Cities ? You just don’t see it. We need to catch up with our story telling and our casting. Why not have a woman of color be the lead? So her cultural background doesn’t have to be the whole story just as why not have lesbians in other roles in drama as just a fact and a part of their character not the reason for the whole story. So it isn’t a coming out story. It isn’t a story that is just about being Arabic Australian – it’s a beautiful story about finding yourself that’s also a road movie, a thriller and a love story.”

Along with the surprising cultural context, the film’s other greatest strength is its beautifully done love scene. We all know it when a lesbian sex scene rings false and this one is refreshingly true to life. Grounded in the dynamic between these two characters, the scene – which is intimate without being graphic – really gets lesbian sex right

“I wanted to write a scene that was different to much of what I have seen in screen in the past.” says Waldey, “I wanted to show a beautiful love scene between two women that was both passionate and real but also one that was complex and told a story like all of our other scenes. A sex scene that was not coy but was also not just gynecological or porn-like in its approach.”

This scene has received a lot of praise. Mandahla Rose who played E told me,

“It’s wonderful when people approach me telling me specifically how beautiful the scene was. I even had a 13 year old gender fluid individual approach me and they said how much they loved the story and how much they adored the love scene because it wasn’t just two lesbians sharing this beautiful moment, it was two lovers and that is what made the difference.”

All About E is a film with so much going on. It will make you laugh and maybe even cry, is full of well-observed cultural detail and is certainly not your average lesbian movie.

You can see the movie on Wolfe Video here.

Francesca Lewis is a queer feminist writer from Yorkshire, UK. She writes for Curve Magazine and The Human Experience as well as writing short fiction and working on a novel. Her ardent love of American pop culture is matched only by her passion for analyzing it completely to death.

The post Crime caper ‘All About E’ brings Australian diversity to the screen first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Written and directed by Mary Agnes Donoghue, starring two darlings of the big and small screen as well as some seasoned character actors, the recipe was all there for Jenny’s Wedding to be something beautiful, an instant classic. It becomes apparent however when watching the film that Donoghue’s talents lie more in crafting scripts for moving adaptations of novels than in writing and directing an original screenplay from scratch. The film, while it has many redeeming features, is flawed and, ultimately, somewhat disappointing to those of us who have anticipated its release with some excitement.

The story revolves around Jenny (Katherine Heigl), a social worker whose secret relationship with her supposed roommate Kitty (Alexis Bledel) is ready to go to the next level – she wants to get hitched and have babies. Only one problem, her family don’t have any clue she’s gay and she has a feeling they won’t be super happy. Her instincts are right and her mother, worried about what the neighbours in her conservative suburb will think, forces her to keep it secret, even from her siblings. The rest of the movie is mostly intense, cliché-laden conversations, with occasional moments of genius provided by Linda Emond and Tom Wilkinson as Jenny’s repressed but loving parents.

Heigl gives a moving, authentic performance, shining in the emotional scenes, making the inspirational melodrama work in a movie overstuffed with speeches and heart-to-hearts. Tom Wilkinson is a joy, as always, and his scenes with his wife are some of the best. Their bedtime discussions and simmering resentful dinner scene are a delight to watch, though it all does feel very much like something lifted from a play. This is the trouble with the movie in general – massive tonal shifts, lurching from quirky to sentimental, from TV movie to Broadway play. Linda Emond steals the movie with her hilariously earnest and slightly nutty portrayal of Jenny’s poor well-meaning mother. And though the film tries to fit in far too many touching and dramatic scenes, when Jenny comes out to her mother both actors are on form and the heartstrings-pulling dialogue and performances really make it a memorable moment. Jenny’s sister’s subplot of sibling jealousy and marital unhappiness is beautifully played by Grace Gummer but the dead grass metaphor, which starts as clever and insightful, is so overused and overrought that it becomes laughable. What Jenny’s Wedding badly needed was more humour and sass. The scene in which Jenny introduces Kitty to her parents’ friends for the first time at a funeral, in which she utters the lines, “Hey Kitty, my dad wants to know if one of us straps it on in bed” is pure gold. Leaving sentimentality at the door and letting Jenny’s defiant bitterness after years in the closet come rushing out, to the general dismay of the buttoned-up gathering and her shy, polite girlfriend, is a rare moment of well-observed humour that the film really benefits from. The score, funded by the film’s Indiegogo ask for post-production money, shifts from pleasant to saccharine and the pop songs chosen for the soundtrack are way too on the nose, as much as I love Mary Lambert.

My principle issue with the movie was that I just really didn’t buy Jenny and Kitty’s relationship. They don’t even touch, in any way, until almost 30 minutes into the movie and their relationship doesn’t seem anything but chaste/awkward until the explosion of chemistry during the cake cutting scene at the end. When I saw them sensually, playfully stuffing cake into each other’s mouths and smooching with relish, I couldn’t help but wonder, “where was this love throughout the movie?” The ironic thing is that Kitty seems like she actually is just Jenny’s roommate. Their relationship just doesn’t read as a romantic one at all.

Jenny’s Wedding is an important film, that’s undeniable. It stars some beloved actors and focuses on a topic that is worth exploring. In this post-marriage equality world, we will likely begin to see many more films like this, looking at the family tensions that arise, the ways in which traditional families deal with the new attitudes towards queer love. This one, arguably the first of its kind (mainstream, accessible) may be flawed, but it still matters.

Francesca Lewis is a queer feminist writer from Yorkshire, UK. She writes for Curve Magazine and The Human Experience as well as writing short fiction and working on a novel. Her ardent love of American pop culture is matched only by her passion for analyzing it completely to death.

The post Jenny’s Wedding Review first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Part two of the lesbian short film “Lesbian Survival Guide” by Lee Friedlander.

The post ‘Lesbian Survival Guide’: Part 2 first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Part one of the lesbian short film “Lesbian Survival Guide” by Lee Friedlander.

The post ‘Lesbian Survival Guide’: Part 1 first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Blue-eyed blonde bad girl Rachel Ruth Reynolds) is mature for her 18 years. An aspiring songwriter, she’s given up on her music after the death of her mother and her neglectful father isn’t around very much.

The arrival of dad’s new employee Amy (Madeline Merritt), who is staying in their swanky Los Angeles guest house for the weekend, brings Rachel the inspiration she needs. A wholesome college graduate fresh to California from the cornfields of Iowa, Amy happily confesses her dreams and desires to Rachel over the course of the weekend and the two women gradually fall in love.

The post The Guest House trailer first appeared on Lesbian.com.

A touching coming of age film about a young tomboy.

The post “Tomboy” trailer first appeared on Lesbian.com.