The Shy One and the Confident One
Or, Why is This Dynamic in So Many Lesbian Movies?
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If you’ve watched as many lesbian films as I have, you may have noticed that there are a number of similarities among them. In addition to the fact that a lot of them are period pieces and many of them are sad, there is also a particular dynamic between the lead characters that many of these films have in common. For the sake of brevity, I will call this the shy/confident dynamic. More specifically what I am referring to is a relationship dynamic where one character is shy, naive, and/or lacks confidence and the other is seemingly more confident and, importantly, more forward than her romantic counterpart.
There are numerous films that in some way depict this dynamic, such as Desert Hearts, Carol, Aimee & Jaguar, I Can’t Think Straight, Bloomington, Kiss Me, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Snapshots, Vita & Virginia, A Perfect Ending, and Elena Undone. To be sure, not all of these films uphold this binary entirely, and some films even trouble this dynamic as they go on. For example, it is clear in Carol that Carol is not quite as confident as she initially seems (though she is certainly more forward than Therese in most respects). Or, in Summerland, Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s character is initially the confident one who brings Gemma Arterton’s character out of her shell, but it is Arterton’s character who then has the courage to live out her truth. And, the critically acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire explicitly subverts normative power dynamics, both between lovers and between an artist and their muse.
Despite the instances of this formula being subverted in some way, it remains a very common dynamic among lesbian films. Much of the reason for this is that these films tend to follow a similar narrative trajectory. While the films I’ve mentioned are certainly love stories, the experience of falling in love is also frequently framed as a metaphor for finding oneself and gaining confidence. In order for this particular narrative to play out, it usually means that – at least on the surface – one character is more confident or experienced than the other so that they may bring this same confidence out in their paramour. Think, again, of Carol, wherein the final act depicts Therese “growing up” following the life-changing experiences she has had falling in love.
It is certainly conceivable that both characters could be lacking confidence in some way and that their love story could affect both women similarly, but this narrative is far less common. (Such a scenario is more prevelant in films depicting adolescents, such as Mosquita y Mari, The Summer of Sangaile or The Secrets). Regardless of how the specific dynamics play out, what’s important here is that these love stories are also framed as stories of empowerment for at least one of the protagonists.
The gift these love stories give our protagonists is often implicitly tied to the knowledge they gain about themselves through the act of falling in love. In modern-day films, these epiphanies often amount to something of a coming-out narrative, though the particular contours of this narrative may vary. In other cases it is not a literal coming out, such as in period pieces like Carol or The World to Come in which coming out is not an option, nor even a consideration. But, regardless of the exact circumstances these films often depict one of the characters discovering their attraction to women at the same time as they are falling in love. Indeed, many queer films more broadly are at least partially coming out stories, as this seems to be a type of narrative that is easily mapped onto queer films and thus easily understood by audiences.
Part of this has to do with the notion of audience identification. While romance films can certainly depict the experience of falling in love from the perspective of both parties, many of these films often center on one character’s perspective over the other. A time-tested strategy in any genre of film is to center on a protagonist who is an outsider or lacks some essential understanding about the world around them so that the audience can relate to them, in this way viewing the cinematic world through their similarly naive eyes. In lesbian films, the character that audiences (in particular queer audiences) are more likely to relate to is the character who lacks confidence in some way, rather than the one walking on screen with that confidence already in hand.
Certainly, there is an element of aspiration here wherein (queer) viewers who feel they are lacking in experience long for someone to engender this same reaction in them. (Queer people often express that they feel lacking in romantic or social experience as compared to their heterosexual peers who were able to have these experiences as adolescents). To be sure, this element of fantasy and longing is a part of straight romances as well – think of the romance novel in which a woman gets whisked away from her destitute circumstances by a strong man on horseback.1 The difference, perhaps, is that the women reading romance novels are assumedly meant to identify with the main female protagonist (though certainly, cross-identification with the male hero is possible), wherein there are ostensibly two women in lesbian movies that a viewer may identify with.
By making one of the characters something of an outsider – both to the world of lesbianism and to her own feelings – this pushes audiences to identify with one character over the other. (Though again, each viewer has a different experience to the media they consume and queer viewers are particularly adept at finding alternative readings to a given text). Certainly, straight love stories often peddle in similar metaphors about love engendering freedom in more ways than one. Think, for example of Titanic (which to be fair, I have previously discussed in terms of its lesbian elements), which suggests that the greatest thing Jack gave Rose was not his love, but the confidence to truly be free.
It’s probably fair to argue that these types of narratives are somewhat overdone, and that the coming out story is not the most interesting (or even the most universal) queer story that one can tell. Indeed, coming out need not be a prerequisite of queerness at all. But, there also seems to be some desire on the part of audiences for this type of narrative – the fantasy of being swept off one’s feet by someone wiser than oneself is decidedly compelling. (Queer love stories – both lesbian and gay – also frequently depict lovers with some sort of age gap for this reason). And, as the best of these films show us, the empowerment that can come with falling in love can effect all areas of one’s life.
In the end, this question might be of the chicken-or-the-egg variety: Are these movies made because audiences truly desire them, or do audiences desire them because they keep getting made? Regardless of the answer to this (perhaps unanswerable) question, this particular dynamic remains compelling to sapphic audiences who are now well-versed in the language of lesbian cinema. Even if this dynamic never truly plays out in our own lives, I suppose there’s no harm in dreaming.
I’ve never read a hetero romance novel before. Can you tell?