When the phrase ‘queer cinema’ is uttered, the same image often springs to mind, mostly because it’s the one we see most commonly: gay men. The genre is saturated with their stories; some of them are excellent, of course, but for the most part, they’re facsimiles of the same thing. Movies with lesbians, for whatever reason, seem to get less shine.
Of course, we know Carol, but the film is often framed as the be all and end all of queer women’s representation in cinema. Still, because of its time period, it’s drenched in as much sadness as it is beauty. There are more stories with different paths taken by lesbian protagonists. You just don’t hear as much about them.
To mark Lesbian Visibility Week, here are seven underrated sapphic films worth watching.
Water Lilies (2007)
Céline Sciamma’s directorial debut was this quiet domestic drama set in a French suburb at the end of summer. In it, a young woman named Marie expresses an interest in joining her town’s synchronised swimming club. But her desires are driven by one thing only: Floriane, the attractive bad girl of the team, who’s a few years her senior and strangely alluring to her.
My Summer of Love (2004)
Before he was nominated for an Oscar for directing the 2018 Polish romance Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski made a sapphic love story set in Yorkshire. In it, two teenagers — one from a working class background, the other far more middle class — bond over a summer, discovering things they never knew about themselves in the process. It’s also known as the film that launched Emily Blunt’s career.
Bound (1996)
The Wachowski’s noirish, sex-filled thriller is the perfect blueprint for the wild worlds they’d come to make in future. A far cry from the soft visions of sapphic desire other filmmakers paint, Bound tells the story of a gangster’s mistress and the woman she has an affair with. Together, they formulate a plan to extort millions of dollars from the mob, and frame the gangster.
Show Me Love (1998)
Another tale of teenage crushes, this time set in Sweden, Show Me Love tells the story of Agnes, a girl who, suffering friendlessly in her own sadness, becomes infatuated with Elin, the popular girl in school. Lukas Moodyson has spent much of his filmmaking career focussing on the intriguing parts of youth culture; this is easily one of his most touching.
Pariah (2011)
Dee Rees’ debut feature holds the rare achievement of being the most contemporary film added to the United States National Film Registry, rendering it “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. Pariah follows a 17-year-old Brooklynite who, having spent time with her openly lesbian friends, starts leaning into the butch side of herself she’s long denied. Her personal liberation leads to pushback from her mother.
A Secret Love (2020)
A Netflix original, this affectionate documentary tells the story of an American baseball player who spent nearly seven decades in a secret lesbian relationship with the woman she ran an interior design business with. It captures the pair at a fairly fresh part of their lives, in which they can be open about it, finally, without judgement.
The Bostonians (1984)
Before he wrote the script for the Luca Guadagnino adaptation of Call Me by Your Name — eventually winning an Oscar for it — James Ivory had created a wealth of films as both a writer and director. One of them was his adaptation of The Bostonians, a Henry James serial from the 1800s about the free-spirited daughter of a faith healer and the two people trying to romantically pursue her: a lawyer and a suffragette. Vanessa Redgrave earned herself an Oscar nomination for her performance as Olive, the woman fighting for women’s right to vote.