Retro Lesbian Film

Retro Lesbian Film
Hailey Bieber Is Ready for Anything
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Keely Weiss
Keely Weiss is a writer and filmmaker.

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An official guide to solid sapphic cinema ahead.
Perhaps it’s trite to say that “representation matters,” but some things are cliché because they’re true. The first time I ever saw lesbians onscreen was when my high school’s Gay Bisexual Straight Alliance played part of the first scene of the original L Word series. (The “sweet little figs” scene, in case you were wondering—the girls who get it get it.) Even so, it wasn’t until years later, when I first saw Blue Is the Warmest Color , that I actually found a queer story that reminded me of my own.
In the decade since, LGBTQ representation in media has only continued to proliferate. And though I’m now a fully out adult who can hang out with other queer people in real life instead of just at the movie theater, the excitement of discovering a story I can see myself in hasn’t waned at all over the years. If anything, every new queer film I stumble across brings me even more delight than the last. If you’re in the market for some solid sapphic cinema, let this list of iconic lesbian and bisexual films be your guide.
Long before we knew them as queer women, the Wachowski sisters made an indelible contribution to the sapphic film canon with their directorial debut, Bound , a heist movie featuring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as a pair of lovers getting ready to make a run for it. The movie itself is a sexy, stylish neo-noir; also noteworthy is the Wachowskis’ hiring of Susie Bright, a queer sex educator known as the “Pauline Kael of porn,” to choreograph the sex scenes between Corky (Gershon) and Violet (Tilly)—a decision that paid off handsomely in the final film.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire has rightfully earned widespread acclaim since its 2019 release, but don’t sleep on director Celine Sciamma’s 2007 debut, Water Lilies , featuring Portrait star (and Sciamma’s former romantic partner) Adèle Haenel. A coming-of-age film set in a middle-class Parisian suburb, Water Lilies follows three teenage girls as they explore their sexualities at the local pool over the course of a single summer.
When university professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) travels to Reno for an extended stay, she’s just doing what any woman trying to leave her husband in the 1940s would do: post up at a “divorce ranch” long enough to qualify for residency in Nevada, the state with the easiest, quickest marital dissolution process in the nation. But Vivian gets more than she bargained for when she falls in love with Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau), a sculptor and the divorce ranch’s adopted daughter. One of the first wide-release films to positively portray a lesbian relationship, Desert Hearts has a permanent spot in the sapphic cinema canon.
Featuring Laurel Holloman before she was The L Word ’s Tina Kennard, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love isn’t a movie about coming out—although love interest Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) does so to her popular friends—or about overcoming homophobia, despite the fact that protagonist Randy (Holloman) lives with her aunt because her mother kicked her out of the house for being gay. Instead, it’s a sweet, earnest, wryly funny story about two teenagers falling in love for the first time.
Frustrated by a dry spell in her dating life, college student Max (Guinevere Turner) agrees to go on a date with a woman named Ely (V.S. Brodie). Though they hit it off, they go their separate ways after that night—but Max’s friends are determined to see to it that she eventually gets the girl. In classic lesbian fashion, Turner co-wrote the screenplay with director Rose Troche, only for the two to break up in the middle of production.
Based on the classic Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt , Todd Haynes’s splashy film adaptation is a real treat for the senses. Rooney Mara stars as Therese Belivet, a 1950s shopgirl and aspiring photographer who falls for titular housewife Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) when the latter accidentally-on-purpose leaves a glove at her shop counter. Cue the whirlwind romance, epic road trip, and bittersweet resolution.
Dee Rees’s deeply moving, beautifully shot debut film follows Alike (Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old girl living in Brooklyn, as she comes into her identity as a butch lesbian. Her mother (Kim Wayans) and father (Charles Parnell) are, respectively, hostile and indifferent; her friendship with her openly lesbian best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), is complicated by Laura’s own feelings for her. As she navigates first love, ostracism, and heartbreak, Alike finds solace in her English class and a growing passion for poetry.
Directed by Jamie Babbit, But I’m a Cheerleader is a campy, colorful, big-hearted must-see of lesbian cinema. When 17-year-old cheerleader Megan’s (Natasha Lyonne) conservative family confronts her with their suspicion that she might be gay, she is aghast. But after her parents ship her to a conversion therapy camp called True Directions, Megan gradually realizes they just might have been right about her—and as she falls for fellow camper Graham (Clea DuVall), she begins to question whether it’s really such a terrible thing to be a lesbian after all.
Ever since it premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Blue Is the Warmest Color has been a wildly polarizing film—as much for its three-hour runtime as for its graphic seven-minute sex scene. Still, this movie (adapted from the French graphic novel of the same name) is a tour de force, featuring masterful performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos as a French teenager discovering her sexuality and Léa Seydoux as the confident older lesbian with whom she falls madly in love.
The Watermelon Woman is a (somewhat meta) romantic dramedy following Cheryl (writer-director Cheryl Dunye), a video store clerk who decides to make a documentary about a Black “mammy” actress from an Old Hollywood film in which she is credited only as “The Watermelon Woman.” Cheryl sets about tracking down the actress, all while navigating a new relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a customer at the video store. A touchstone of the New Queer Cinema movement, The Watermelon Woman was the first feature film directed by an out Black lesbian.
In this quintessential lesbian romance, Wilhelmina “Wil” Pang (Michelle Krusiec) has a close but contentious relationship with her mother, Gao (Joan Chen), who doesn’t know Wil is a lesbian. At a gathering her mother forces her to attend, Wil is drawn to dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), but she soon learns that Vivian is her boss’s daughter. Shortly after, Wil learns that Gao has been kicked out of the home she shared with her father, Wil’s grandfather, for getting pregnant out of wedlock—forcing her to come stay with Wil.
Acclaimed Korean horror director Park Chan-wook changed tack in 2016 with The Handmaiden , an adaptation of Sarah Waters’s historical lesbian novel Fingersmith . It follows a romance between Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) and her handmaiden, Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri)—who is actually a pickpocket hired by a mysterious con man to convince Hideko to marry him. But Hideko has secrets of her own, and several reversals over the course of the film’s plot reveal that not all is as it seems.
The titular acronym D.E.B.S. stands for Discipline Energy Beauty Strength: the name of a clandestine paramilitary academy founded to train promising young women in the art of espionage. The story starts when four D.E.B.S. are tasked with surveilling supercriminal Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster)—only for one of the girls, Amy (Sara Foster), to fall in love with Lucy while on the job.
It can be a little trite at times, but I Can’t Think Straight is at its core a winsome story of cross-cultural love and defying familial expectations. While preparing for her wedding, wealthy Christian Palestinian Tala (Lisa Ray) meets her male best friend’s girlfriend, a shy British Indian Muslim woman named Leyla (Sheetal Sheth). They strike up a fast friendship that soon escalates into something more, and both women are forced to decide what is more important: their sense of filial duty or their desire to live truthfully.
Stories about the intense relationships between classmates at an all-girls school are a sapphic rite of passage, so it stands to reason that Lost and Delirious is a can’t-miss film. Nearly as soon as she arrives at her new boarding school, Mary (Mischa Barton) falls in with Paulie (Piper Perabo) and Tori (Jessica Paré), her two dorm mates. As they draw her into their circle, Mary quickly learns that Paulie and Tori’s relationship is more than just friendly. But the rest of the school isn’t as accepting as Mary is, and over time, Paulie and Tori’s relationship risks exposure—with terrible consequences.
What if you met the love of your life on your wedding day? That’s what happens in Imagine Me & You when Rachel (Piper Perabo) locks eyes with florist Luce (Lena Headey)—in the middle of Rachel’s own wedding to bona fide good guy Heck (Matthew Goode). Though Rachel and Luce try their best to resist their attraction to each other, it gradually becomes clear that fate just might have other plans.
The Fishers are going through a lot of change: Single father Frank (Nick Offerman) is being forced to close his vintage record store, his daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) is getting ready to go to college, and both are navigating new romances—Frank with neighbor Leslie (Toni Collette), Sam with the enigmatic Rose (Sasha Lane). Then a song Frank and Sam recorded at one of their father-daughter jam sessions goes viral. Hearts Beat Loud is a sweet, uplifting family comedy about growing up, moving on, and cherishing your loved ones through it all.
Disobedience chronicles a story of forbidden love between two women from a conservative religious community. When Ronit’s (Rachel Weisz) father dies, she travels to London and returns to the Orthodox Jewish community of her upbringing—the community that ostracized her years ago after catching her with another woman. Once there, she’s startled to discover that the woman she was caught with, Esti (Rachel McAdams), is now married to their childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola).
Rafiki follows the romance that develops between two young women in Kenya, where homosexuality is illegal. Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) and Ziki (Sheila Munyiva) are the daughters of two rival candidates in a local election. As the girls grow close, tensions rise, and their fathers’ political careers hang in the balance. Rafiki premiered in 2018 at Cannes, where it was the first Kenyan film to be screened at the festival.
Niche though it may sound, “sapphic crime thriller” is an enduring genre of LGBTQ cinema. Out the same year as Bound (which also earned a spot on this list), Set It Off is a heist film featuring a crew of ride-or-die best friends: Stony (Jada Pinkett Smith), Frankie (Vivica A. Fox), T.T. (Kimberly Elise), and—our favorite—handsome butch lesbian Cleo (Queen Latifah). But even more than a high-octane action movie or a bastion of stud representation, Set It Off is, to quote Carmen Phillips at Autostraddle, an “ iconic loving tribute to Black women’s friendship .”
In a departure for horror director Jennifer Reeder, Signature Move is a queer dramedy about a Muslim Pakistani woman named Zaynab (co-writer Fawzia Mirza) who falls in love with a Mexican woman named Alma (Sari Sanchez). The catch: Zaynab, who also serves as her mom Parveen’s (Shabana Azmi) caretaker, isn’t out to her mother. When Zaynab’s cloistered life threatens to derail her romance with Alma, she decides to take a page from Alma’s family’s lucha libre community in hopes of winning Alma back.
Based on the iconic Alice Walker book, The Color Purple is a cultural touchstone. Set in the early 20th century, the film follows the epic journey of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) as she struggles to make her way out of an abusive marriage. Central to the story is Celie’s love affair with Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), a showgirl who helps Celie leave her husband.
Released April 29, 2022, Crush may be the most recent film to grace this list, but it has thoroughly earned its spot here. Rowan Blanchard stars as high schooler Paige, an aspiring artist and out lesbian with a massive crush on the beautiful and popular Gabby Campos (Isabella Ferreira). In order to get close to Gabby, Paige decides to join the track team, where Gabby’s twin sister AJ (Auli’i Cravalho) takes on the task of coaching her. But just as Gabby begins to take an interest in her, Paige realizes that she’s also begun to develop feelings for AJ.
Director Clea DuVall’s much-hyped Christmas rom-com was originally headed for a 2020 theatrical release until the pandemic pushed it to Hulu. Perhaps it was for the best: Happiest Season is the perfect curl-up-in-your-seasonal-pj’s-and-yell-at-the-protagonist-for-making-bad-choices holiday movie. When Abby (Kristen Stewart) agrees to go home with Harper (Mackenzie Davis) for Christmas, she’s ecstatic to meet the people who made her favorite person. There’s just one problem: Harper isn’t out to her family, and her image-obsessed father (Victor Garber) is running for mayor.
Desiree Akhavan’s sophomore film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post , may be better known, but it’s her debut that best showcases her singular voice and uniquely queer perspective. Told out of chronological order, Appropriate Behavior is the story of a breakup and its aftermath. As Shirin (Akhavan) struggles to move on from her first queer relationship with Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), she acts out, explores her bisexuality, confronts her family’s quiet homophobia, and begrudgingly begins to grow up.

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When thinking of a ‘best’ list of LGBT related films, the criteria is so varied that it’s very hard to pick just a small amount. Are we comparing them in terms of narrative? Or is it strong and unique characters? Is it in terms of innovation of the genre, and can we even call lesbian or LGBT films a genre in general, considering they can vary from comedies, to dramas, to murder stories?
Of course, one must consider all these things at once because, after all, films are complex and multi-sided. Although many films were made in earlier cinema about lesbians – whether openly or in more subtle forms – it is the New Queer Cinema that really transformed the definition of sexuality and the potential of what non-heterosexual films can be as well as the way LGBT characters can be presented. Although the movement never became mainstream, it has subtly infiltrated both indie and Hollywood cinema in a way that it’s traces are still seen today.
Without further ado, although a list of great films should never be limited to such a small number as 10, these titles definitely stand as strong representations of lesbian films.
10. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)
The Handmaiden is a brilliant film in all its aspects, with a plot that doesn’t stop to shock and surprise at every turn. The film follows a con-man, Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) who is on a mission to seduce and steal the inheritance of a rich Japanese woman Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee).
To carry out his plan he hires the help of a professional thief, Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri) to act as her handmaiden. However, the women are smarter than Fujiwara thought and what follows is an endless power swap of the characters, in the process of which Sook-Hee and Lady Hideko fall in love.
9. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)
Although this is not the film most associated with Fassbinder, it is a real gem and one of his greatest works. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant was adapted by him from his own play of the same name, giving it a great cinematographic spin and illuminating it with rich colours suitable to a film about a fashion designer. The story is both humorous and tragic, showing the difficulties of finding true love when you’re rich and famous – a story quite personal to Fassbinder himself.
Set in a luscious and artistic apartment of Petra Von Kant (Margit Cartensen), a powerful woman who is arrogant and self-righteous, whose life changes for the better or worse when, infatuated with a young model Karin (Hanna Schygulla), she invites her to move in with her, causing a series of drama.
8. My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)
The summer is a strange romantic time for youth. A period where you have a lot of time to yourself, and longing for something exciting to happen that will help you feel more alive.
Set in such a period of time, My Summer of Love explores a unique relationship between two young girls that could not have less in common. Tamsin (Emily Blunt), coming from an upper-class background and a spoiled attitude and Mona (Natalie Press) a lower-class girl hiding her brightness behind a hard-faced mask.
However, whether it is the summer, or the bonding over their familial problems, the girls immediately become close and find themselves crossing over the strict friendship barrier.
Like many LGBT films, Pariah is a film of self-discovery, and one that is very much personal to the director herself. The film follows Alike (Adepero Oduye) in a coming of age story that creates a lot of sympathy and identification with the young teenager.
One can’t help but root for her as she is forced to hide her unfemininity in front of her parents, changing clothes before seeing them as a reassurance of her normality. At the same time we can experience the joy of her first love and the transformation in makes in her and for her relationship with herself as she finally finds someone who understands her.
The film is filmed with beautiful cinematography from Bradford Young that reflects Alike’s emotions through the saturated colours at a night club scene and green murky tones of desperation as she finds out the price of being herself.
6. Desert Hearts (Donna Deitch, 1986)
Desert Hearts is a ground breaking film in that, for the first time, a man was not in any way involved in the romance between two women.
Armed with powerful and complex characters, Desert Hearts follows Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) in an attempt to start fresh after her divorce, as she learns to rediscover who she is. The spark she needed appears in th
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