You know how the majority of lesbian movies have totally unrealistic sex and how both leads are usually femme?
This is not that movie.
The passion between the leads is believable, the sex is hot and the one lead is femme and the other is butch (and a roofer by trade).
I am 3/4th of the way through and I don't think one dies as in most lesbian movies. They may not last but that happens in lesbian real life, too.
I am so happy that I found it by accident-on VuDu of all places.
Btw, in case you couldn't tell: I am loving it! It just feels "real" even though it is a movie. There is nothing cheap or tacky or pretend about it.
I did roll my eyes at YouTube having put in parentheses next to the title:
(Lesbian Movie).
I don't think I have ever seen them do that about a (Straight Movie) even one with a lot of sex in it.
Partial review below:
"...But the new Canadian drama Below Her Mouth, which opens stateside on Friday, is a direct challenge to these ideas: It’s got an androgynous heartthrob (Erika Linder), an all-women crew (including director April Mullen and out writer Stephanie Fabrizi), and several scenes showing how women actually make each other—and themselves—come.
That this is still revolutionary in 2017 says a lot about how much more progress is needed in the patriarchal film industry, and in the U.S. in general. It’s not a coincidence that Below Her Mouth was made in Canada, where censorship is less of a concern and the government freely supports the arts.
To make her actors feel safe and supported, Mullen not only insisted on a closed set, with just her and the female DP in the room but took other steps to ensure both comfort and authenticity: “We hid microphones around the room so there would be no boom operator,” she told me. “It was a really, really intimate space that we kind of created for them.”
That comfort allowed the intimate scenes between Linder and co-star Natalie Krill to be more organic.
“I would never have interrupted them just to be sure we got the right angle or the right light,” says Mullen. “You hope to catch it and if you don’t, you have to tweak things. But I would never direct or interrupt them in these scenes. I wanted it to play out really authentically between the two of them.”
Much of Below Her Mouth is driven by the sexual chemistry between Linder and Krill, who meet when Linder’s Dallas is working as a roofer on the house next door to Krill’s Jasmine. They later reconnect at a lesbian bar (Jasmine is engaged to a man but goes with her bisexual friend), and begin an affair. Mullen argues their blooming relationship is told just as much through their bodies as it is through dialogue. “You give everything you can to another person through your body—every movement and spirit and soul in that scene. So it’s like each sex scene really does have its own vibe.”
Below Her Mouth is one of few lesbian films that acknowledges it’s for a specific audience: In interviews, the stars of Carol and Freeheld continually insisted how “universal” their projects were, how they really weren’t “lesbian movies.” But can’t a work exist as both? Perhaps trying so hard not to be a “lesbian movie” is why those films failed to really capture what gay women are like—in bed and in the world.
The creatives behind Below Her Mouth don’t feel the need to negate it as a love story between two women to reach a larger audience. Maybe that comes from not being beholden to the American studio system.
There’s something to be said for allowing queer women to be in control of their own stories—though, even then, some viewers will inevitably disagree with those portrayals. (See: The Kids Are All Right.) But what Below Her Mouth accomplishes, compared to big studio flicks and even most lesbian-sex-heavy indies, is the true eroticism that emerges when two women are alone together, without feeling the watchful eye of a man—or several men.
Sure, they might end up being in the audience. But they needn’t be in the room when shooting the scene.
Many lesbian films by women are dismissed as sappy, heavy on melodrama, sisterhood, and cringeworthy folk songs. The worst of them resemble paperback romances or have a predictable plot with a tragic acting to match. Blame it on a lack of creativity—or budget—but there’s often less focus on the central plot and characters than the sex act themselves.
We gay gals are ultimately looking for a love story, a modern fairy tale that isn’t tragic like Monster or melodramatic like Claire of the Moon.. A movie is only be improved when it’s created by those who have the lived experience. (Or at least by those smart enough to reach out to experts, like the Wachowskis did with Susie Bright on Bound). What ultimately serves lesbian viewers best is a heightened version of reality: Two women with chemistry that is conveyed through organic dialogue, plot and body language, engaging in sex acts that weren’t created by an outsider’s imagination.
Yes, cinema is fantasy, but shouldn’t it be ours?"
Trish Bendix
Trish Bendix is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor. She is currently the editor in chief of GO Magazine and a former editor in chief for AfterEllen.com.
http://www.newnownext.com/below-her-...n-sex/04/2017/