Therese & Isabelle

This is as clumsy, unsophisticated and earnest as books like the one it was based on are, but important for the same reason: at a time when lesbian attraction was so far from being a nameable possibility, these cheap paperback romances of boarding school lust could be sold in small bookshops or passed among friends to give girls some small insight into themselves, some brief feeling of belonging. So I’m very happy to see an equally sensitive film made out of one of these books. It’s not terribly well-crafted or acted, and it’s fairly simple. This is not a film I love for artistic merit. This is a film I love because in terms of my societal and cinematic interests/agenda, it is important.

Anyway, it is a wistful, truthful portrait of youth and loss. The pretentious romance novel voiceovers, discussing sex with all manner of literary illusion, must have been ripped straight from the book. This is another thing that is all the more endearing, considering my approach to the film. I love that the sex scenes are ‘marred’ by this voiceover, are relatively obscured and come later in the film. That way, it seems to me, the film could never satisfy or even appeal to the crowd that just wants to see two young girls fucking. That way, it remains a film purely about young girls, for young girls. It is surprisingly pure and sensitive.

Lame dialogue, yes, but I’ll echo it: “for all the other Thereses and Isabelles who will love each other by different names,” I’m glad this film exists.