Lesbian Machine
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Lesbian Machine
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Is Katie from 'The Mitchells vs. The Machines' part of the LGBTQIA+ community?
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Abbi Jacobson said it was "refreshing" to play a queer character in an animated film.
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Warning: SPOILERS are ahead for The Mitchells vs. The Machines.
Though a road-trip adventure is a frequent plot point viewers have come to expect on the screen, the animated film The Mitchells vs. The Machines breaks new ground in a multitude of ways.
The Netflix original begins when Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) is getting ready to head off to her first year of film college.
As she prepares to leave for school on her own, her dad, Rick Mitchell ( Danny McBride ) decides to turn it into a weeklong vacation.
The two embark on the trip with Rick's wife, Linda Mitchell ( Maya Rudolph ), Katie's younger brother, Aaron Mitchell (Mike Rianda), and the family's dog, Monchi. In addition to sharing a small space together for an extended period of time, the Mitchells end up also having to deal with a robot war.
Because Katie wears a rainbow pin and she makes references to being "different" from everyone else in her school to how it took her "a while to figure [herself] out," viewers suspected that she identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
In the very last scene of the film, there's explicit confirmation.
Many viewers have expressed their excitement for The Mitchells vs. The Machines online because the protagonist of the film, Katie Mitchell, is queer. Though there's been more LGBTQIA+ representation on the screen in recent years than ever before, it's still quite rare for both animated and kids films.
Oftentimes, when there is an LGBTQIA+ character in a show or movie for children, it's only hinted at or suggested. In The Mitchells vs. The Machines , it's made explicitly clear that Katie is queer.
At the beginning of the movie, Katie shares that she's "always felt a little different than everyone else" and like she's an "outsider" in comparison to her peers. A rainbow then flashes on the screen, which many viewers took to be the first subtle reference that Katie is queer.
She also shares that she's struggled to connect with her parents because they don't fully know her.
"My parents haven't figured me out yet," Katie says in the first moments of the movie. "To be fair, it took me a while to figure myself out."
The character wears a rainbow pin throughout the entirety of The Mitchells vs. The Machines , but she only overtly discusses her sexuality in the final scene.
After Katie has begun college, she has a video call with her mom.
"Are you and Jade official, and will you be bringing her home for Thanksgiving?" Linda asks.
Katie then tells her mom that "it's only been a few weeks" since she started dating Jade.
Based on her brief interactions with her classmates in the final moments of the movie, it's clear that Katie has found the sense of belonging that she was craving.
While Katie's connection to the LGBTQIA+ community is meaningful to a lot of audience members, it also proved to be quite important for those who made The Mitchells vs. The Machines.
Broad City actress Abbi Jacobson, who lended her voice for Katie Mitchell, said that she "relate[d]" to the character from the start. Abbi also identifies as queer.
"I just love Katie, and voicing her and getting to know her and breathe life into her was so exciting," she said in the film's press package for Netflix. "Katie's yearning to find her voice in the world and her people is something I really relate to, even now, but I remember when I went to college I felt so much of that — that longing to escape and see what life is all about. But what the film really gets so well, is that if you're lucky enough to have a supportive family like Katie's, they are your people too. I love that messaging."
Abbi said that she's thankful that kids now will have a character like Katie to serve as inspiration.
"It's really about family, both blood and found, and how life is about both. I have two young nieces and I kept thinking about them watching this. Katie is the kind of character I would want them to look to and be inspired by and want to be like — she's totally herself, wildly creative, a great big sister, hilarious, queer, excited to dive into her passions," she added. "I wish I had this movie when I was a kid."
While speaking to Pride , Abbie reiterated that characters like Katie didn't exist when the 37-year-old was growing up.
"I'm queer, so it was so refreshing to get to play a teen queer girl in an animated movie. That's not something I've done before and I haven't really seen that that much," the actress said. "I definitely didn't grow up with that. I think it's so important for young people to see that..."
The Mitchells vs. The Machines is available to stream on Netflix now.
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We look back through film history at 10 of the greatest movies about lesbians.
It’s tricky to pinpoint the moment when the movie world could proclaim the first openly lesbian film. Identifying early cinematic representations of lesbianism was like collecting crumbs off the top table. Sapphic sisters were used to watching whole films just to see a character (usually portrayed as victim, killer, neurotic or prostitute) shoot a covert look that audiences could interpret as queer – for instance, the apparent lesbian subtext between Vienna (Joan Crawford) and Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954).
In the UK , 1967 was a milestone, the year that homosexuality was decriminalised (even if there was no mention of lesbianism in the new legislation). In the USA , the 1969 Stonewall riots were a turning point that led to the beginning of the modern gay and lesbian liberation movement. From those moments on, lesbians have been slowly coming out on celluloid, albeit often controlled by the gaze of male directors.
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In tracking the key films of lesbian cinema, we’ve restricted our list to films available on DVD or for streaming in the UK . This sadly means we’ve had to leave out many favourites: Mädchen in Uniform (1931), Club de femmes (1936), Personal Best (1982), Virgin Machine (1988), and great films by Ulrike Ottinger and Chantal Akerman. Which begs the question, why are there not more lesbian films available to watch on DVD /VoD? After all, Walter Benjamin did say that the lesbian is the heroine of modernism…
Childie: Not all women are raving bloody lesbians, you know.
George: That is a misfortune I am perfectly well aware of!
The Killing of Sister George is one of the greatest and most grotesque of all lesbian crossover films. Life B.G. (before George) held little hope for cinema-loving lesbians. Pre-decriminalisation dramas included 1967’s The Fox, which has the basic premise that all a lesbian needs is a man, and 1963’s The World Ten Times Over, which is possibly the first British lesbian film but was heavily censored before its release.
All hail Beryl Reid, magnetic in her portrayal of George, a loud, aggressive, cigar-chomping dyke who loses her job and her young lover. It has the mother of all lesbian love triangles: butch girl-chasing George; the predatory, sophisticated middle-class dyke (Coral Brown), and Childie, the coquettish neurotic femme (Susannah York). Rated X for its explicit sex scene, the film tanked at the box office but remains an era-defining cult classic. Significantly, some scenes were shot in an actual London lesbian bar, The Gateways Club, giving audiences a rare on-screen glimpse of London lesbian culture.
Born in Los Angeles but a New Yorker by choice, Barbara Hammer is a whole genre unto herself. Her pioneering 1974 short film Dyketactics, a 4-minute, hippie wonder consisting of frolicking naked women in the countryside, broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity, desire and aesthetic. Abdellatif Kechiche, director of last year’s sexually sensationalist Blue Is the Warmest Colour, might have done better if he had taken a leaf out of Hammer’s book. Hammer calls the film her ‘lesbian commercial’.
She went on to become one of the brightest and most significant lesbian avant-garde filmmaking voices of the past 40 years, whose work includes over 80 film and video works covering lesbian love and sex, women’s spirituality, radical feminist politics, the figure of the goddess, and lesbian/queer film history. Without Hammer, there would be no Born in Flames (1983), no Desert Hearts (1985), no Go Fish (1994).
At time of writing, Ukraine is going through a 21st-century revolution and if the geopolitical land grab ends in victory for Russia, with its anti-gay laws, then the future for Ukraine’s LGBT community will be uncertain.
Another Way is set in another eastern European country dealing with its own revolution: Hungary immediately after the failed 1956 uprising against communism. The film details a courageous and intelligent love story between 2 pro-democracy journalists. The topic was a double taboo because it was the first Hungarian film to deal with homosexuality as well as a controversial look back at the consequences of the revolution. Director Károly Makk sensitively juxtaposes this tender but doomed love affair with the high hopes and bitter suppression of the Budapest Spring. It’s clear that Makk was not especially interested in homosexual rights in 1950s Hungary; nevertheless his portrayal of lesbianism is neither exploitative nor melodramatic.
Oh la la! C’est Paris, c’est magnifique! Well it would have been magic if you happened to be a boho creative woman living on the city’s Left Bank in the early decades of the 20th century. Greta Schiller’s absorbing investigative documentary could have been called Paris Was a Lesbian for the amount of Sapphos living, working and loving together. Writers Collette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, poets H.D. and Natalie Clifford Barney, booksellers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier… the list goes on and on.
Schiller (Before Stonewall, 1984), together with her long-term collaborator Andrea Weiss, rewrites (her)story with unseen home movies and new research to create a magical film about this most original of women’s artistic communities. Weiss’ British queer film history documentary A Bit of Scarlet (1997) is also worth a look and can be watched on the BFI Player.
Director: Lana and Lilly Wachowski
No lesbian film list is complete without the Wachowski siblings’ dazzling sexy noir/crime caper/slapstick comedy Bound. It was their pre-Matrix breakout film, a titillating Playboy hybrid thriller mashed up into a lesbian feminist love story. The Wachowskis don’t just play with the male gaze, they flip it sunny side up and get feminist writer Susie Bright in as their lesbian ‘sexpert’.
The story concerns a mobster’s girlfriend falling in love with the ex-con dyke next door. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon positively sizzle as couple on the run, Violet and Corky, giving audiences plenty of girl-on-girl action. Taking inspiration from Billy Wilder and their love of comics, Bound completed a 90s trilogy of (in critic B. Ruby Rich’s phrase) ‘Lethal Lesbians’ films (beginning with Thelma & Louise, 1991, and Basic Instinct, 1992) – a cinematic expression of lesbian feminist desire.
US indie writer/director/educator Cheryl Dunye burst onto the New Queer Cinema scene in 1996 with The Watermelon Woman, an audacious, self-styled ‘Dunyementary’. However, it’s her rarely screened follow-up film, Stranger Inside, which really impresses. Made for HBO and produced by R.E. M.’s Michael Stipe, it’s set within the US women’s prison system and tells the story of an incarcerated young African-American woman who goes in search of her biological mother.
Based on 4 years of research into the lives of women inside, the drama is a powerful study of prison life in the 21st century. Far away from the piss and vinegar of Scrubbers (1982) and Prisoner Cell Block H (1979-86), Dunye’s film makes a potent case for how race and class have created a new caste system behind bars.
In 2002, when Lisa Gornick’s debut feature premiered at the BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (now BFI Flare), it was a significant moment because the film was the first British lesbian feature in 10 years. As such, the film and director attracted considerable attention both at home and abroad. Gornick wrote, directed and starred in this breezy, urbane comedy, which she described as “a thesis on love and its labels”.
The life and loves of 30-something Marina are explored as she searches for answers to the big questions in her life. Made 2 years before the internationally successful TV series The L Word (2004-09), Do I Love You? deftly captures the zeitgeist with its investigation of lesbian identity and sexual mores in the 21st century. It’s like a lesbian Annie Hall (1977) or Frances Ha (2012), with Gornick (who recently starred in The Owls) cornering the market as the thinking woman’s favourite dyke.
Lesbian cinema finally hits the big ‘O’ time with Lisa Cholodenko’s (High Art, 1998) family-friendly comedy The Kids Are All Right ratcheting up four Oscar nominations in 2011, including best picture. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore tear up the straights-can’t-play-gay rulebook as long-term married couple Nic and Jules, who hit midlife parenting and partnership problems.
The mainstream press went nuts, joyful that they had a homosexual film they could write about without unsettling their more conservative readers – though Cholodenko suffered a backlash from some queer corners for her inclusion of hetero sex (with beefcake Mark Ruffalo), and for her film’s apparent advocacy of traditional family values.
The French term for tomboy is ‘garçon manqué’, which translates literally as ‘failed boy’. “I don’t need to comment, you can see how bad it is”, said writer/director Céline Sciamma (Water Lilies, 2007) on the phrase, preferring to give this honest little film about gender confusion an English title.
Laure/Mikael is 10 years old, her/his family has moved to a new town and we follow her/his adventures over one summer as s/he negotiates the early complexities of selfhood: playing a game of football, finding s/he is attracting the attention of local girls and facing the ultimate test of wearing a bathing suit. In France, the film was received as a family film and went on to be shown in primary and secondary schools as part of classes about cinema.
The second British lesbian film to be included on the list, Break My Fall is the story of the painful end of a one-time loving relationship. A previous BAFTA nominee for best short with 1999’s Travelling Light, writer/director Kanchi Wichmann made this feature debut shooting on 16mm on the streets of east London. (Campbell X’s East End-set Stud Life, made a few years later, is also worth a peek)
Influenced by the formalism of early Chantal Akerman films such Je tu il elle (1975), it boasts music from local bands (Wet Dog, Peggy Sue) and the kind of realistic characterisation of people and city that can be found in Bette Gordon’s cinema (eg Variety, 1983). Released in 2012, Break My Fall (together with Weekend and others) was identified as part of a new wave of queer cinema, charting queer experience in all its complexities.
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Originally published: 11 March 2014
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Turn on one of these LGBTQ+ flicks to see yourself onscreen.
Even though the LGBTQ+ population is on the rise in the United States, lesbian and gay relationships are still underrepresented in much of popular media. But the good news is, a more diverse array of human experiences is appearing on screen just about every year. According to the 2020 GLAAD media report , of the 118 films released from the major studios in 2019, 22 included LGBTQ+ characters. That's the highest percentage of inclusive films in the report's history. And that representation really makes a difference. Media that shows LGBTQ+ people normalizes love and relationships between two people of the same gender, educates viewers on the long and difficult journey we're still taking toward equal rights and reinforces the fact that that gay, lesbian and LGBTQ+ people are just that, people who deserve to live loud and proud.
For newly out or young viewers, that validation is especially important as it can make them feel seen and heard in their experiences. That's a powerful thing, especially for those who don't otherwise have a safe place to be who they are. No matter your favorite genre, one of these movies focused on lesbian characters will be the perfect choice for your viewing pleasure. Be warned, though: some of them are a little hot and heavy. We've made a note of that where applicable, so you can save them for date night. Whether you want to help your LGBTQ+ teenager feel accepted or need a good film to watch with your partner, you'll find something to love on this list.
A wealthy woman and a department store clerk begin an illicit affair in this must-watch LGBTQ+ film set in the 1950s. Adapted from the cult classic The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, it depicts how unexpected romance can change your life.
Fans of comedian Tig Notaro will love this tear-jerking documentary about life after a devastating cancer diagnosis. If you also cried your way through her stand-up set where she announced it, show this to a friend.
Many of us first watched this sleeper hit when we were teens ourselves, and it's well worth revisiting. It's poignant, hilarious and endlessly quotable.
Charlotte is a troubled musical prodigy and Elizabeth is a new star student. Before long, they find themselves starting down a dangerous path with sinister results. This LGBTQ+ thriller will send shivers down your spine.
High schooler
Heels Dance
Pigging Hole
Horny Teacher Porn