It’s time to stop pussyfooting around about the lesbian sex scene.
Two decades into 21st-century filmmaking, lesbian cinephiles are being forced to discern from an overwhelming buffet of new queer films on the small, streaming, and silver screens. Many of these movies, boasting unprecedented budgets and algorithm-fueled distribution models, unhelpfully come with marketing that is swift to emphasize pride over plot, inclusion over entertainment, morality over amusement. In this golden age of streaming and the (new) Roaring ’20s of representation, studios speak down to potential consumers more blatantly than ever before, hawking tasteful inoffensiveness to potential viewers with every iPhone scroll. Though its title and heterosexual sex scenes implied an investment in the forbidden, Lee Daniels’s (2020) resisted showing the chanteuse in bed with another woman (a loss for viewers beguiled by lead Andra Day’s undeniable on-screen chemistry with Natasha Lyonne’s Tallulah Bankhead). Even Sebastián Lelio’s (2018), fondly remembered among queer cinema enthusiasts for its leads (Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz) having shared a strand of saliva during an adulterous affair, boasted a tagline that was only sinful in its condescension: “Love is an act of defiance.”
