Cheryl Dunye | Potluck and the Passion / 1993

 

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 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.

    The funniest pair of these luncheon guests are a lesbian couple living in New York who travel down to the couple’s home without having the proper direction, losing their way, predictably, several times while attempting to buy their contributions to the potluck in convenience stores along the way. Eventually they eat most of the food when they again become lost and fear they’ll never arrive in time to be fed.

     They arrive after nearly everyone has dined and made friends with one another except for a white 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.

 

Los Angeles, July 26, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2020).