Queer, Period: Desire Through The Ages

Based on Jane Rule’s 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, the film adaptation follows English professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver), who travels to Reno in 1959 seeking a swift divorce. As Vivian boards at a desert ranch in the divorce capital, she develops an intimate bond with free-spirited Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), and a slow and tender romance unfolds between them. Desert Hearts was Donna Deitch’s directorial debut and is considered one of the first films with a positive, sensual depiction of a lesbian relationship, garnering a cult status among sapphic audiences.

A poetic manifestation of the reimagined world of James Mercer Langston Hughes—an American poet, social activist, novelist, and playwright, Looking for Langston is a meditation on Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. Isaac Julien’s black-and-white film travels between the realms of realism and surrealism, explicitly exploring the desires and fantasies of Black queer artists and writers including Hughes and James Baldwin—and their ghosts. Julien’s film is a captivating gateway to a world where the spirits of the marginalized can freely dream, exist, and love.

E. M. Forster began writing his most daring novel in 1913 and revised it throughout his life, but it was not published until 1971, the year after his death. In this film adaptation, James Wilby plays Maurice Hall, an ordinary Englishman who finds himself attracted to his closest friend (Hugh Grant) before unexpectedly making a connection with a handsome gamekeeper (Rupert Graves). One of the most personal and emotionally resonant of all Merchant-Ivory productions, the film benefits from Richard Robbins’s lush score, memorable roles for acting legends Ben Kinglsey and Denholm Elliot, and the Oscar-nominated costumes of Jenny Beavan and John Bright.

The first film directed by a woman to receive the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, Céline Sciamma’s 18th-century romance revels in the sensuous affair between aristocrat Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) and artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who is commissioned to paint her portrait. Though betrothed to a wealthy man of the Milanese upper class, the stubborn Héloïse refuses to be captured, either by her male suitor or the artist meant to paint her. Sciamma’s tale of sexual liberation finds beauty in the electric connection between her leading women for a gorgeous and aching story of forbidden love and the fleeting nature of romance.

Director/cowriter Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) adapted Sarah Waters’s 2002 novel Fingersmith, changing the setting from Victorian England to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s, for this twisty drama of love and betrayal that is one of the filmmaker’s boldest and most romantic works. When a young woman (Kim Tae-ri) is hired as the maid of a beautiful heiress (Kim Min-hee), unexpected alliances are formed and hidden agendas are revealed. Park juxtaposes the film’s lush production value with startling eroticism to create a vivid cinematic experience.

Blake Edwards adapted the 1933 German film Viktor und Viktoria for his rollicking musical comedy about a down-on-her-luck singer in 1930s Paris who finds precarious success by pretending to be a male-to-female impersonator. The beautifully designed production received seven Oscar nominations, including nods for stars Julie Andrews (in the title roles), Robert Preston (as her witty gay mentor), and Lesley Ann Warren (hilarious as a shrill showgirl). Composer Henry Mancini and lyricist Leslie Bricusse won an Oscar for their elegant song score and its adaptation.

“Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old.” In director Sally Potter’s interpretation of author Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography, Queen Elizabeth I makes these commands to the androgynous young Orlando, played from the 1550s through the early 1990s by a striking Tilda Swinton, as she bequeaths the nobleman a castle on her deathbed. Dedicating their immortality to poetry and art, Orlando also exercises a broad sexual curiosity and eventually embraces the gender identity of a woman. Made on a modest budget of $4 million, Potter showcases her resourcefulness through Swinton’s astounding costumes, which beautifully telegraph each period in which Orlando is currently situated.