Be gay, do crime! A brief history of the lesbian thriller
An excellent new development for anybody who is completely fed up of lesbians being denied electricity in favour of tightly-winched corsets and exchanging yearnful glances by candlelight ‒ after a glut of admittedly brilliant queer period dramas, it looks like 2024 officially belongs to the sapphic crime thriller. French lesbians sharing lingering hand holds in Portrait of a Lady on Fire? A miserable Kate Winslet scrubbing at a crusty old ammonite while pining after a geologist’s wife? No longer: brooding historical stories are officially taking a back seat in favour of raucous crime thrillers and sapphic, gun-wielding villains hellbent on wreaking supremely gory revenge on the hetties.
Though it feels like there’s a new wave building steam, queer crime has been a movie staple for decades; from using as shorthand for villainous tendencies, to carving out spaces. It arguably set the bar for the depiction of lesbian relationships on-screen, and decades before intimacy coordinators became common on TV and film sets, the siblings hired the feminist critic and editor Susie Bright to consult on the sex scenes between ex-con plumber Corky and mafia-affiliated Violet, which unfold amid a saturation of bloody, gangster-fuelled violence. It’s a proper classic.
