“What a strange girl you are.”
“Why?”
“Flung out of space.”
Lesbian period pieces seem to be everywhere these days,
as SNL recently parodied:
“A new award-winning film, Lesbian Period Drama.
Starring two straight actresses who dared not to wear makeup”
Since the release of 2015’s beloved Carol,
there have been at least 15 other lesbian period films
and several television shows (which is a lot when you consider
there still aren’t very many LGBTQIA+ stories made overall).
So why do so many films about lesbians
follow this very specific formula?
“Featuring academy-award-winning glance choreography.”
Many of these films connect with viewers because they’re beautifully filmed
with a sophisticated arthouse aesthetic, and they offer a sense of empowerment
to queer audiences who have rarely been able to see themselves
represented in history.
“You dreamt of me?”
“No.
I thought of you.”
At the same time, this trend also boils down to
the impulse to copy films that have found an audience
and are considered marketable.
Lesbian period pieces almost always star white,
straight actresses who have a strong mainstream fanbase,
and often end tragically,
playing into rigid audience expectations about queer films.
“My guess is that it was diphtheria.”
“No!”
Here’s our take on exactly why there are so many lesbian period pieces,
and why it’s important not to get too stuck on any formula.
“So much is said about what they feel for one another
in those tiny glances and in those very small touches.”
One of the most distinctive qualities of a lesbian period piece
is the aesthetic.
They tend to have many of the formal hallmarks
of arthouse cinema:
long takes and carefully framed static shots
with slow-paced editing, muted color palettes,
dim lighting and limited dialogue.
“Twelve lines of dialogue, two and a half hour runtime.”
They are undoubtedly beautiful films to look at,
and that makes them popular among cinephiles,
film festivals, and high-brow audiences.
“And now with Ammonite he's absolutely delivered
on that promise,
crafting a beautifully textured, emotionally layered,
and achingly moving love story”
Thus there’s an incentive to continue crafting lesbian period pieces
that fit this proven mold, as they win accolades
and can be marketable to a specific audience
that can yield profits on a modest budget.
Aside from their arresting cinematography, though,
these period pieces’ aesthetics can tend to uphold certain
more pernicious aspects of the entertainment industry’s status quo,
through their focus on white, thin, feminine, cis-women.
“Figured you were looking for this.”
“Thanks, uh...”
“Louise.”
The industry assumption that a white lesbian period piece
is more marketable can mean that non-white lesbian films
aren’t given the budgets and support they need
to reach audiences.
Along with the overwhelming whiteness of most lesbian period pieces,
they also spotlight a constrained, somewhat homogenous version
of femininity.
There may be something aesthetically pleasing
about seeing two women quietly falling in love
while dressed in several layers of restrictive clothing.
But a love story between two feminine women
doesn’t truly disrupt the rigid standards of gender expression
in the same way that depictions of more masculine-coded women can.
Sure, these films take place in an era where gendered divisions were
(supposedly) even stricter than they are now,
but throughout history queer women have still presented at varying levels
of masculine and feminine.
“Anne Lister was born in 1791 in Yorkshire Halifax
and she was a diarist, a lesbian.
She had a nickname, Gentleman Jack,
because of how she looked and the rumours of what she did
with women around the area.”
Using this delicate type of femininity as our only form
of lesbian representation upholds an unrealistic standard
of what an “acceptable” queer woman “should” look like.
“You were the most fascinating person there tonight.
And I think the most beautiful.”
(Notable exceptions to this rule include films like
Colette and Elisa Y Marcela
that depict how gender non-conforming people
may have expressed themselves in the past.)
“I never felt like I belonged, and then one day
I tried on my brother's school uniform, and that was it.
I knew I was home for the first time.”
The insistence on upholding thin, white femininity
also leads to the casting of well-known straight actresses
in lesbian roles.
“Playing a character who has a relationship with a woman
and feels great love for a woman - it was very new for me because
I did see the role of a woman through completely different eyes”
And though this may help the marketability of the film,
many queer people feel that straight actors do not capture
the authenticity of their experiences.
This is true for LGBTQIA+ films across genres;
most recently, James Corden received backlash
for his performance as a gay man in The Prom,
which Erik Anderson of Awards Watch called,
“gross, offensive, the worst gayface in a long time.”
“We’ll check out the Reba McEntire collection at Kmart,
we’ll do a little fashion show.”
Some also fear that the casting of straight and cis actors
in these roles leads to audience members subconsciously
perceiving queerness as a temporary costume,
because they know that once the cameras turn off
these actresses are straight cis-women.
“Y’know, I’ve been married for 18 years.”
A triumph of the lesbian period piece aesthetic
is that it typically aims to avoid and challenge the male gaze.
“Women have been imagined by men so they are in charge of our images.”
“Still?”
“Still, of course.”
It’s certainly a draw of the genre for female audiences to see themselves
represented on screen without being portrayed as sexual objects
for a man,
as is the overwhelming norm in mainstream media.
A lesbian film that explicitly contests the legacy of the male gaze,
is Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which focuses on
the female transformation from object to subject.
“We’re in the same place. Exactly the same place”
“If you look at me, who do I look at?”
However, while Portrait of a Lady on Fire
was written and directed by a woman (Céline Sciamma),
many lesbian films are still directed by men,
a notorious example being Abdellatif Kechiche’s
Blue Is the Warmest Color.
“He wanted the sex scenes to be very... sexual.”
That was his, uh, wish.”
Jul Maroh, the author of the original graphic novel,
has described the movie’s graphic sex scenes as
“a brutal and surgical display… of so-called lesbian sex,
which turned into porn and made me feel very ill at ease…
among the only people we didn't hear giggling
were the potential guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation
of their fantasies on screen.”
“The author of the graphic novel which inspired,
very freely inspired it.”
“She said as a feminist and a lesbian spectator
I cannot endorse the direction because she took on these matters.
There's also been an awful lot stuff with the actors themselves
saying that they had an incredibly hard time
with the director”
A more subtle problem with the accepted formula
of the lesbian period piece is that it might allow
straight audiences to believe that queer hardship is largely
in the past.
“We expect given the seriousness of the charges,
and the incontestability of evidence, that the court will grant
sole custody of the child to my client.”
The fact that some of the most obvious systemic and social obstacles
presented in the movie have been overcome
may inadvertently let audiences minimize the challenges that
queer people still face today.
Lesbian period pieces are most often associated
with one type of narrative:
tragedy.
“Just promise me something. Don't write to me.
And don't look for me.”
This is due to the expectations audiences bring to the genre.
The audience walks into the theatre knowing that these women
will likely not end up together.
“I want this to be different. Our different.”
“This must make your husband very happy.”
Because it’s automatically assumed that the past was
strikingly more homophobic and sexist than the present,
tragedy might feel like both the natural and accurate
ending to these films.
“I love you.” “I love you too.”
But the association between onscreen queer romance
and unhappiness can be traced back to The Hays Code,
which from the 30s through the 60s
included queerness in its forbidding of quote “sex perversion”
and its guidance that any (quote) “sin”
shouldn’t be framed with sympathy.
And the lose idea that being queer must be answered with
some form of misery outlasted strict implementations
of the code itself.
“I rush into the secret house.”
“Pauli!”
The Children’s Hour — released in 1961
as the Code’s dominance was reigning —
was able to tell a surprisingly empathetic queer story for its time,
but this still had to end with a brutal self-inflicted tragedy.
“Martha! Martha!
Martha!”
Even in very recent TV examples, The bury your gays trope has persisted,
with writers frequently killing off queer characters
to motivate a straight character’s journey.
“We commit Katherine Ebiki Mackenzie-Dawson
to a natural end”
In the post-Hays-Code era, depictions of explicitly
queer characters’s struggles actually served an important purpose.
When the mainstream mindset was still overwhelmingly homophobic,
tragic endings harnessed empathy for queer characters
and humanized people that were deeply othered.
“She’s the only person who ever loved me, you know?
I think I’ll die without her.”
Yet as society continues to progress, many people are looking for depictions
of queer joy instead of — or in addition to —
queer struggle.
Carol resonates so strongly with viewers in part because
it was adapted from a novel often considered to be
the first-ever lesbian book with a happy ending.
And while the film’s conclusion may not be spelled out,
based on the way Carol and Therese smile
at each other in the final moments, the viewer is encouraged to believe
they get back together.
Even when historic pieces may not always allow
for traditional happy endings, films can still resolve
on a hopeful note.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire recognizes that its two main characters
can’t end up together in their society,
“You imagine my pleasure?”
“It's a way of avoiding hope.”
but concludes with the emotional closure
of reinforcing the meaningfulness of their time together.
“Don’t regret,
remember.”
As Marianne watches Heloise become overcome with emotion
while hearing the song that Marianne once played for her,
this ending suggests that their relationship will
forever be so precious to each of them that it’s ultimately
worth the heartbreak.
The success of these films proves that happy queer endings
are not only possible, they are desperately wanted.
Though there are surely more bottom-line economic reasons
why lesbian period pieces keep getting made,
we also need to look at the positive reasons why audiences
are responding to them.
“You’re an exploding star, refracting light across the universe.”
Certainly, many fans of these films are lesbian or queer themselves,
and it’s easy to see why they’re drawn to these narratives.
“What is it you want?”
“Another 40 minutes with you”
Queer women are often forgotten and erased by history.
The legend goes that Queen Victoria was unable to imagine lesbian sex,
though it’s more likely that a desire not to draw attention to it
was behind applying Britain’s anti-homosexuality law
only to men
and simultaneously writing lesbians out of (legal) history.
“Between men, it’s illegal. It's a criminal act.
Between women, it isn’t, so…”
“It isn’t?”
Queerness is not a modern creation; it has long existed,
in many different forms and contexts.
“I love, and only love, the fairer sex.”
But it may be difficult to find evidence of it in history books.
“It's pretty rare that a period piece is not adapted from a book
or a historical event.”
“This great love story between two women in the 18th century,
it's not written so you have to write it.”
These films or series can expand our historical imaginations,
and today’s most well-received lesbian period pieces
are often the ones most boldly reimagining history for themselves.
The Favourite takes place during the 17th century,
but prioritizes modern storytelling and self-aware humor
over surface accuracy.
“You're so beautiful.”
“Stop it, you mock me.”
“I do not.
If I were a man, I would ravish you.”
Dickinson is another example that presents the past in a playful,
at times fantastical light, and uses contemporary music
and dialogue to make the history relatable for today’s viewer.
There is something incredibly affirming about seeing yourself
represented in history,
particularly when this history has been hidden
or ignored for so long.
When these films are viewed together as part of a larger canon,
they provide a powerful sense of queer longevity,
allowing us to feel a sense of community with
and connection to the past.
“I feel terribly real right now.”
A downside of this picture, though,
is that this representative history has yet to be extended
to queer women of color in a meaningful way.
So while we can celebrate the progress being made
within the period piece genre, we must also work toward
giving more people the opportunity to retell their histories.
The phenomenon of the lesbian period piece
tells us a lot about how expectations shape which films get made –
many audiences like to know what to expect from a film,
and filmmakers count on tried-and-true tropes
in order to sell their films.
There is a particular comfort that audiences get from knowing
what they’ll get from an entry in this particular subgenre –
it will be beautiful; women will cry in dramatic outfits;
and someone will have their heart broken.
“I wish you'd told me before. I could have saved the boat fare.”
“Mary... Mary!”
With the film industry in constant fear of losing money,
studios aren’t eager to take any risks on producing new stories or styles.
Ironically, though, new stories are exactly what fans of this genre
(and arguably all genres) want.
With movies like The Favourite and Summerland,
or TV shows like Dickinson leading the way,
we can imagine a whole new type of lesbian period piece
and LGBTQ+ story in general —
one that centers joy, playfulness, and limitless creativity.
“Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?”
These films can be deeply affirming by proving to queer women
of all backgrounds that their stories deserve to be told —
and people are listening.
“I was born like this. And I act as my
god-given nature dictates.”