ending and beginning
by Douglas Messerli
Pat Branch
and Cheryl Dunye (screenplay), Cheryl Dunye (director) Potluck and the Passion /
1993
Dunye’s 1993 short film, The Potluck and the Passion, is truly
closer to playwright I María Irene Fornés’ work. To celebrate their 1st year
together, Dunye and her friends decide to invite a select group of each of
their best friends, most unknown to one another.
They arrive after nearly everyone has dined and made friends with one another except for a white Janine-like woman who has brought along a black lesbian woman she has just met, and who responds to her friend’s sexual interest in another invitee by storming out of the event at the very moment the stragglers finally enter.
But
it might be more appropriate to describe the white woman’s departure and the
straggler’s arrival as the beginning rather than an ending, since the girl the
white woman has left behind not only discovers that she has a great deal in
common with another interloper, who has cooked up a delicious spicy chicken
dish, but so enjoys the entree that she insists she must watch the other
prepare a new batch. In fact, we might argue, the potluck is only the beginning
as it leads into a night of new relationships, deeper friendships, and even the
passions these women have quickly developed by simply being brought into the
hot-house atmosphere of Dunye’s and her lover’s welcoming embrace.
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2020).
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