William A. Wellman | The Public Enemy / 1931

boyfriends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Harvey F. Thew (screenplay, based on a book by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon), William A. Wellman (director) The Public Enemy / 1931

 

The very last place where you might have looked for a sissy to be hovering over a muscled tough guy, measuring and commenting on his every bodily limb, is in William A. Wellman’s highly esteemed The Public Enemy, with the gangster, Tom Powers (James Cagney) being measured for a new suit by impressed tailor (Harold Minjir) with Tom’s inseparable friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) and the tailor’s assistant Douglas Gerrard looking on amused by all the fuss, the latter carefully writing down the measurements of the muscled killer as if he were noting down an address and a telephone number for a future date.

      In the midst of so much meanness and blood, the scene was surely meant just to be amusing, the tailor so unrelated to the real world that—even when after he praises Cagney’s muscled biceps (“Oh, sir, here’s where you need extra room, such a muscle!”) being warned that if he doesn’t stop fussing that the gangster will show him what it’s used for—doesn’t bat an eyelash as he swoops down to measure the meanie’s inseam. But that didn’t stop Joseph Breen and the Hays Code committee from cutting the scene in the 1941 re-release. Even the sight of Mae Clarke attempting to serve him up breakfast in bed was snipped by their scissors.

      If Wellman’s plot of how a young street tough grows up become a hardened mob underling who shakes down barkeeps who refuse to carry Paddy Ryan (Robert Emmett O’Connor) and Nails Nathan’s (Leslie Fenton) brand of beer and is more than willing to mow down anyone who attempts to stop him is fairly predictable, as critic Daniel Eagan aptly puts it, Cagney’s “eyes burn through his shots, commanding attention, bringing urgency to [moments] that [don’t] really deserve it.”

     Moreover, Wellman’s chronological presentation of how Tom got to where he ends this tale—a ghoulish dead corpse delivered to his mother’s doorstep—turns him into a kind of legendary American hero rather than what the movie introductory and closing statements attempt to claim represents the film’s real purpose: to reveal the true evil of such figures.

     Despite his numerous robberies, his pointless killing of a policeman and a horse, and his later revenge murders of his old fence Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) and the opposing mob head—all brilliantly portrayed by Wellman through sound effects (a head falling upon a piano keyboard, the whinny of a dying horse) offscreen—we can’t help liking Tom, who even after he has outgrown the childhood character portrayed by Frank Coghlan, Jr. often still seems throughout the film like a grown-up spoiled boy, as his later girlfriend Mamie describes him, who can’t cope when he doesn’t get what he wants.

      Astoundingly, Wellman turns his white sis-gender heterosexual all American kid into a kind of misunderstood outsider. While Breen and his boys fussed over the sissy boy scene, they missed the subtle kind of coding this director had previously woven into his 1928 film Beggars of Life. For all his bravura manifestations of heterosexual dominance, at heart Tom is a mamma’s boy, more tied to her apron strings than his do-gooder, straight-laced brother Mike (Donald Cook) who works hard, attends night school, and joins the Marine Corps in World War I.

      As Matt ruminates to his new wife Gwen (Joan Blondell), “I guess Tom’s not the marrying kind,” the age-old term for queer males. Given Cagney’s mostly macho remonstrations that may seem like an audacious and even ridiculous idea to assert. But consider the evidence.

      Throughout the entire film, Tom goes everywhere with his lifelong “boyfriend,” as his blonde enchantress Mamie (Jean Harlow) describes Matt—and Tom’s other male friends. Every scene in which he might settle down for a little heterosexual pleasure is immediately interrupted—in what could be described as one of the most obvious examples of coitus interruptus the cinema has ever portrayed—as time and again he is immediately called away by his male friends on “business.” And even when he seems temporarily settled into a relationship with a woman, he quickly looks for a way out. Who other than an extreme misogynist might imagine planting a half cut-open grapefruit on Mae Clarke’s pretty mug? The act is so ridiculous that most commentators describe it as the most memorable scene in the movie.

       In fact, we are never shown him engaged in sex, let alone willing to marry a girl as Matt is Gwen. The one time in the film when he is forced into a sexual act by Paddy Ryan’s “mature” girlfriend (Mia Marvin)—she presumably “raping” him while he is drunk—the disgusted Tom goes barging out of the safe house where he’s been holed up, with Matt tagging behind him, the “boyfriend” shot down and killed by machine guns aimed at all those who might dare to leave. And it is that event which ultimately results in Tom’s downfall and his realization that he’s not so tough when he attempts to revenge Matt’s death by killing the head of the rival gang.

       Despite the screenplay’s cover of sibling hatred—Mike is everything in the “normal” world that Tom is not, a married, working man, who educates himself and finds of way to kill men through warfare without any of the societal stigma, the latter a fact with which the younger sibling challenges him when Mike refuses to share a glass a beer in toast to his return home from the War—Tom’s true love and source of envy is his elder brother. Mike is the only figure in this film who Tom allows to challenge and even brutally slug him (in the process of filming the scene Cagney evidently lost a tooth but remained in character nonetheless) without seeking revenge.

     Even after Tom’s been seriously shot and lays in a hospital bed, he admits to his mother that he is convinced that she must surely love his brother better. And although his bedside conversations are not nearly as convincing as his backroom excitement over the enticements of mobster plots, he assures his brother of his admiration and determination to follow his example when he recuperates.

       Obviously, there is no possible “cure” from the real sickness racking Tom’s body. And brothers, particularly given this film’s trajectory, cannot be represented as lovers or even close friends—although Mike suddenly seems tortured by a previously unperceived deeply felt passion for his younger brother’s welfare, willing even, when Paddy Ryan reports that Tom’s been kidnapped by the rival gang, to take to the streets to fight like a mobster to bring his brother back. 

     And when Tom is brought home as a Frankenstein-like corpse, Wellman arranges that he is specially delivered up to Mike, who finally is left with the duty of explaining both Tom’s life and his own hidden knowledge of his brother’s activities, as well as their secret feelings for one another to both his mother, wife, and possibly himself. Suddenly we have entered into the domain of a horror tale.

      Wellman did not gain the sobriquet from his fellow cineastes “Wild Bill” by accident. 

 

Los Angeles, November 16, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2021).

Satyajit Ray | জলসাঘর (Jalsaghar) (The Music Room) / 1958

trapped in the past

by Douglas Messerli

Satyajit Ray (screenplay [based on a story by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay] and director) জলসাঘর (Jalsaghar) (The Music Room) / 1958

 

Satayajit Ray's fourth feature film is one of his finest, even if it is, at times, almost lugubrious in pacing and thematics. But then the world of Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), one of the last traditional feudal Zamindar's (landlords) of 1930s, is a place of stasis, Roy languidly sitting on the top of his palace, while smoking a hookah, as he stares down on the decaying rooms which were once filled with joyful celebrations and overlooking the land which for years served his forefathers, but which is now mostly flooded, with backwater channels serving as access for small boats.

     The film begins with Roy hearing a melody, part of what he knows to be the Thread ceremony, celebrating the coming of age of a son. In this case the ceremony is being carried out in the nearby home of Mahim Ganguly (Gangapada Bose), a former loanshark who has made it well, and for years has attempted to get the attentions of the lordly Roy. Roy has been invited to the ceremony, as his servant Ananta (Kali Sarkar) reminds him, but he no longer leaves his large house. It is as if memories and time have frozen him into place. Ray uses the music, accordingly, to retrack prior events, demonstrating how Roy has reached this position. It is, of course, a kind of creaky device, employed in hundreds of grade B movies; but in this case, since Roy's major love is music, it works almost as a kind of Proustian trope, music opening up the story while presenting us with a brief history of traditional Indian musical works. One might almost quip that The Music Room is a sort of early variation of the Bollywood film, except that there is far less emphasis on Western traditions than there is on ancient Bengali music. Only the neighbor is fascinated with all things Western, while Roy is caught up, one might say, trapped, in the past.  

    But what a glorious past that was! The director shoots entire scenes of music performances, beginning with the Thread ceremony, this held for Roy's own music-loving son, Khoka (Pinaki Sen Gupta). The guests are mostly awed by the beauty of the music as they sit upon the carpets spread out throughout the lovely music room, topped with a swaying chandelier and filled with beautiful objects. Only Ganguly seems uncomfortable, envious perhaps, but also sweating his way through the performance as if his discomfort emanated from his inability to sit so long in languor. He is a man of the future, a man hardly able to pause in a world of rapid change.

     Roy's son is also learning to sing, and his lovely performance, eventually interrupted by the slightly petulant mother (Padma Devi), is one of the most endearing moments of the film. We soon discover that she has every right for her peevishness. Little by little, her husband has sold most the home's belongings, and for payment of the initiation ceremony, he has pawned her jewels. Soon after, she determines to visit her aging father, taking Khoka with her, leaving Roy, somewhat fearfully, by himself.

     Another kind of noise is heard in the distance, a kind of rhythmic beating that one might almost call music (certainly Cage might have described it as such). When Roy asks his servant about it he is told that it is the generator atop his neighbor's house, and from that instant on, except for the moments of musical performances, we hear the generator pumping away in the distance, a symbol of the end of a quiet and placid world in a time of movement and dust, as new goods are transported to the neighbor's house along a dirt road.

      Goaded on by Ganguly's celebrations, Roy suddenly determines to hold another musical salon, using a final bag of jewels for payment and calling for the return of his wife and son. As the event begins, a huge storm has arisen, and Ray symbolizes his character's growing obsessions and the possibilities of fate by focusing on a small paper boat that has been blown over in the wind, a spider trapped behind glass. As the concert begins Roy's family has not yet returned and, growing impatient, he searches out his servants for news of their arrival. The boat has been caught in a whirlwind, and his wife has been lost at sea, his son drowned.

     We now comprehend the indolent man sitting atop his roof, looking with despair upon the world around him. He has, seemingly, lost everything. His world is over. The music room has been closed.

     Yet he does still have his title, the respect of the locals, the memories of his former grandeur. When Ganguly again visits him to invite him to a musical event with the great dancer Roshan Kumari and singer Begum Akhter, Roy again declines. "I will not leave my house," he declares.

      Roy, however, is still a proud and foolish man, and determines with his last small bag of coins to hire the two performers for his own final celebration.

   Again, the music room is opened, the light lit, the rugs put to floor, the wine poured into glasses. This performance is perhaps one of the finest traditional Indian dance and song ever filmed. It alone is worth watching all that has proceeded. The event is a great success, and when Ganguly offers to pay Roy prevents him, throwing his last coins at the feet of the performers. We recognize his life has psychologically come to an end.

     We hardly need the rest of Ray's story, wherein, after the candles have been extinguished one by one, Roy takes to his horse, madly speeding away across what is left of his once rich fields. Suddenly the great Zamindar is thrown from the beast, his frightened servants rushing to his side to tearfully embrace this once great man.

     We recognize, however, that that "greatness" is a double-loaded word. Throughout Ray makes certain that we comprehend the immense self-serving pride and foolishness of Biswanbhar Roy, that he is a self-enchanted poobah of his own making. He could not possibly have shifted from his feudal concepts into the 20th century India that was at the edge of a great transformation. Roy's greatness, perhaps, lies primarily in his love of art, not his abilities to live and work with his fellow man. His was an esthetic reality, not the practical reality of day to day life, and in that fact, he was more a servant to his society and its circumstance than were those who worked upon his land.

 

Los Angeles, November 28, 2011

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (November 2011).

Marco Berger | Perro Perro / 2025

man bites dog

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marco Berger (screenwriter and director) Perro Perro / 2025

 

Marco Berger’s Perro, Perro which literally translates in “dog, dog,” is one of the most beautiful and audacious films I have seen in the past few years.

     Most reviewers have loved the work, although I believe also that most of them have misunderstood it.

     A handsome man, Juan (German Flood), on vacation with his girlfriend Jazmin (Bianca Brandimate) on a jungle-like island, discovers a naked and quite beautiful man (, wandering nearby their house. The man is mute, and Juan, clearly attracted to him, as is, I should add, his friend Rama (Matias Quiroga). Juan takes him home as if he were a stray dog and cares for him by first feeding him, providing him water, and eventually bathes him and trims his nails, caring for him as if he were an abandoned animal. The man, in turn, is clearly appreciative, and quickly grows to express his affections for and devotion to Juan.

    But almost immediately something else happens in this tale, quite unexpected. Juan falls in love with his “so-called” pet, eventually even leaving the side of his female partner at nights, and sleeping with his “man.” What might first have been seen as the affection between a pet and a human being is quickly transformed in this work into a true love affair, as the two kiss and stroke one another in a way that certainly breaks the limits of what one might do with a pet dog.

     Jazmin and his other friends quickly note the affection between the two, but simply treat it as a temporary obsession of their friend as if the male he has discovered were simply a beast, a pet he has found in the wild. The strange paradox has led most critics such as Rich Cline, writing in Shadows Off the Beaten Path, to perceive the work as “a surreal drama.” He writes:

 

“Shot in glistening black and white by cinematographer Martin Farina, this surreal drama is so playful that it immediately makes us smile. Argentine master provocateur Marco Berger continues to explore masculinity and connection by blurring lines of sexuality, in this case teasingly lusty inversion of reality. Even if the metaphor is strained, the timeless filmmaking style gives a kick to deeper ideas. It's also sweet and very sexy.”

    Critic Dionar Hidalgo also slightly misrepresents the film:

 

“The premise—a man who finds a “dog” in nature that is, in appearance and behavior, another man—could be interpreted as gratuitous provocation, but Berger transforms it into an unsettling fable about affection. Juan welcomes, cares for, and loves this other body that offers itself docilely, almost devoid of will, while the external warning (“don’t get too attached”) instills suspicion from the outset: every bond implies a form of domination. In this gesture, the film unfolds as a satire of male desire, but also as a reflection on emotional domestication, where the partner—like the animal—can become a territory of control, projection, and dependence.”

 

     But there is nothing at all surreal about this situation. Yes, it is “strange,” but it is not a dream-like situation, but very real in which his girlfriend is disturbed by her boyfriend’s sudden infatuation. The beautiful nude man, whom Berger parades is all his nudity, is never once described as a “dog,” but always as a “man” or the “male.” And indeed, one of Jazmin’s friends actually is terrified by men, she confesses, since she has been attacked by one long ago.

    Jazmin, herself, is irritated by the situation, but being a reasonable 21st century woman refuses to be jealous, although it’s quite clear she actually is. She will not allow the “man” in their rented house, and particularly will not allow him to sleep in their bed. She warns Juan, time and again, to not get too attached, and is obviously disturbed by the long periods he now spends away from her, kissing and now literally making love (without any sexual action) with his new friend.

    As the loving relationship between Juan and his “man” escalates, tensions arise, particularly when her man-shy friend comes for a visit, which forces Juan to actually treat his new lover as a dog, to tie up his new “pet,” who escapes, and hurt by Juan’s behavior, will not immediately return home. It is the story of all males involved in secretive love affairs with other men who are called upon to suddenly treat their friends as temporary animals who cannot be allowed into their house.

     The man’s natural desire to share Juan’s bed results in his having to explain that if he were to enter the bedroom “She’ll kill us both.”

   Juan and his “man’s” relationship, I would argue, is not at all a surreal event, but a metaphor for what happens when a husband or boyfriend suddenly shows an interest in another man. Heteronormative domesticity has it rules after all.

      Several commentators have described Juan’s treatment of his new friend as representing the limitations we put upon others with our love of them. But, in fact, Juan does not truly treat his friend as a domestic animal, but displays his full love of him daily, as does the “man” to Juan. The domesticated being in this world is not the “dog-like” being, but Juan himself, held to the rules of normative behavior by Jazmin and his other friends.

    When he pleads with Jazmin to bring the man home with him, she argues that it would be impossible to keep such a large man in their Buenos Aires home, particularly since he must go to work each day, and the man would miss him sorely. She suggests that they might get a woman, but no men can come into her house.

     Juan suggests that he might keep Juan in his mother’s house and visit him, but her reaction is that of a slighted woman, worrying that there he would perhaps pay no attention to her.

    Yet the love between the men has grown, and as they are soon to leave, Juan is obviously torn between his new love and his old.

     Like so very many domesticated men, he choses to leave his “man” behind, hoping that he might find a new “owner,” which we might describe, in this case, as a “lover.”

      I have mentioned this story once before. I met a young man in college who appeared to be straight, but was clearly on the verge of coming out. He had met one of his teacher’s in Chicago, where he had grown up, who had invited him into the very old-fashioned closeted world of the 1950s and 1960s. And he is obviously intrigued and interested. Knowing I was gay, he invited me to join him on a trip back home so that he might introduce me his teacher and his gay circle. I was still young and rather stupid, and didn’t realize that what he was really seeking was for me to engage him and sex and bring him out. Instead, I had sex with his elder teacher.

     Several years later, I had lunch with him. He had since married a woman, and begged me to please never tell since she would be very disturbed if she knew about our lunch. I do not even know his wife and by that time Howard and I had been together for several years, and I no intentions of luring my younger friend into bed; yet clearly having told his wife of his past, she was terrified that I, as a “man,” might try to steal her “male” away from her. I saw what full domestication had accomplished. Even having lunch with me was seen by his wife and him as a temptation to break their vows.

      In some respects, of course, Berger’s brilliant metaphorical tale has relationships with Edward Albee’s The Goat, which uses bestiality to talk about forbidden and outside sexual relationships. But the marvel of Berger’s work is that he never denies for a moment that Juan’s interest is in another man, the dog metaphor being simply how he and the other’s pretend to deal with the situation. Cruel heteronormativity still wins out. But the film shows us the deep love Juan has suddenly discovered in same-sex relationships, and doubt that his return to Buenos Aires will allow him to forgot that experience. Certainly, the silent man he has left behind remembers the love of their deep friendship, the touch of the other, and his deep kisses, even as he may die of longing.

     Berger, in the shorts I have seen to date, never actually puts his figures into sexual situations; they are always in deep homoerotic situations on the verge of sexuality that is frustrated or delimited. I believe him to be one of the most brilliant and perceptive of contemporary gay writers, attempting to explore a world in which men are seeking to discover same-sex love, yet are constantly stymied by the closed worlds in which they live. I look forward to reviewing his feature works. In his world, men want to experience love with other men, women with other women, but find little easy access to that desire. Instead, they are cut off, made to obey ridiculous social, familial, and other restrictions imposed by ancient values and tradition.

     What a wonderful world Juan might have had if only he might have been able to bring his man home to share his bed, maybe even along with Jazmin.

 

Los Angeles, July 22, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

 

Yann Gonzalez | Land of My Dreams / 2012

strange projections of sexual allure and love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yann Gonzalez (screenwriter and director) Land of My Dreams / 2012 [21 minutes]

 

A clearly itinerant woman, wheeling her suitcase behind her, stops in a barbershop to get a trim and hair wash. The owner tells her that he only trims men’s hair, but still allows her entry and washes and shampoos her beautiful blonde hair.

     The woman, Bianca (Julie Brémond) next walks the Porto, Portugal beach strangely encountering the mother (Paul Guedes) who she apparently has not seen for a long while.

     They immediately bond, the mother suggesting her daughter join up with her for the traveling strip shows she does out of her trailer.

   What follows in this work by the innovative and often controversial French filmmaker Yann Gonzalez, is a very strange experience that is difficult to completely assimilate or simply to comprehend.

    The daughter first strips, the mother acting almost as a whip-toting carnival barker, in front of a small audience of males. The mother passes a hat where each man puts in a few coins. For a few Euros men are even promised that they can go up and touch her breasts and other body parts. The mostly older men pant and lust over her body, while one young boy (Luis Feilipe Rodrigues) pays the Euros to be able to go up and touch her breasts.

      At least now they can properly dine, and the mother suggests before the next show, her daughter go out and explore the city.

      Bianca does, encountering, as she later tells her mother that she  a handsome young musician (Hugo Alfredo Gomes) first on the street, and then in a small grassy plot where the two have passionate sex, the mother clearly approving of the once-in-a-life time romance that can never be experienced again.

      But the intense kisses she soon after plants on her daughters lips are clearly not from motherly-love but from a lesbian incestuous love.

      The second performance of their now mutual strip-tease is desultory to say the least, particularly when the daughter sees her new lover in the audience, he soon after turning away in disappointment and disgust.

       Her mother can only promise her a special performance at midnight which they intend to give for free. In a wooded, almost jungle-like spot, the two perform for men that first appear simply as shadows before gathering, standing in a group like the other attendees while time openly masturbating themselves, some in their pants, others taking out and displaying their cocks.

       Gonzalez is brother to musician Anthony Gonzalez of the M83 group, and the music in this short work, as in many of his others, is essential to its meaning. But what does it all mean?

        I basically agree with the Letterboxd commentator who signs in with the moniker “_Csil.” He or she writes:

 

“From what he's said in interviews, I don't think I'm missing the point when I say that it was Anna Domino's hypnotic neon video that inspired Land of my Dreams, not just her music. Lynch would love the quiet, delirious eroticism of this clip, and I think Yann just wanted to see this blonde undress and dance even more in this blue dream, so he set up a caravan outside Porto, also borrowed from Lynch, in front of which Bianca dances and undresses on a provisional stage, with the most beautiful breasts in the world, which poor and hungry men can touch for 5 euros, until night falls and the final erotic performance becomes something else. It is hard to say how the incestuous thread came into play, Bianca's strange relationship with the older woman who calls herself her mother and who presents and celebrates these striptease performances, but I think all this is just poetic motifs in a deeply cinematic dream, because Bianca's increasingly frightened dance in front of the predatory gaze of men who are more greedy at night is rather a reflection of the impossibility of real love, as the witch says, something that cannot be maintained in the present, that will never be yours, only a memory that had an original for a moment.

     In the fragrant spring night, an unexpectedly evil wind rises and tears at Bianca's veil. It swirls wildly, bringing with it the damp breath of the storm. I rise and close the window. The melancholy of the experience of passing love pervades this strange little cinema, which, despite all its underdeveloped elements and clumsiness, you can't take your eyes off, which captivates you from the first frame to the last, even if at the end you are left with the curious question of what it was all about—but you can see that one of the main characteristics of this wave called post-cinema is that it puts this question in brackets. And if you accept its autonomy and hypnotic visuality, a new set of questions slowly emerges.”

 

    I would simply summarize that Gonzalez is devoted here, as in so many of his works, to presenting what others find as “hideous,” strange projections of sexual allure and love outside of the standard heteronormative vision.

 

Los Angeles, July 22, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

 

Gitanjali Rao | Printed Rainbow / 2006 [animated film]

into the rainbow

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gitanjali Rao (screenwriter, animator, and director) Printed Rainbow / 2006 [15 minutes] [animated film]

 

Indian director Gitanjali Rao’s short animated film is a true treasure and won awards at the Kodak short film award and Critic’s Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

    It begins in gray and muted tones of black and white as an elderly woman wakens, feeds the cat, and proceeds to go about her business in the Mumbi rain. She is friendly, waving to an elderly man across the way. But it is a dreary existence without much to offer.

     This woman, however, happens to also be phillumenist, a collector of matchboxes, some of which are delivered to her quite often by the kind gentleman to whom she has waved across the way.

      Unlike the world around her, these colored matchboxes bring her an entire rainbow world, as when she picks them up their bright colored covers take her to imaginary worlds totally unlike the gray, rainy world of the film, suddenly turns her life into a extraordinary adventures, beginning with her riding an elephant through a jungle, taking her to a stream where she suddenly floats down river to a palace wherein the owner’s concubines gather to smoke hukkahs and later to bathe together in lesbian splendor in the pools.

 

     Soon after, her friend comes for a visit, delivering her up some more matchbooks which he has ordered especially for her collection. She, taking one of them out, becomes a temporary truck driver, speeding, exhilarated down the highway.

 

    It again begins to rain again, and she returns to her matchbox collection, this time taking up residence on a farm, milking cows and doing chores that she obviously finds fulfilling.

      Her gentlemen friend again stops by for a visit, but this time there is no answer. He gently opens the door to see her either asleep in her dreams or perhaps dead. He picks up a box of matches nearby to see her now depicted in the farm where she has evidently found her paradise.

      This is a beautiful film that Rao has dedicated to her grandmother, filled with dreams and new possibilities. Although it cannot be described as specifically a gay film, there are enough clues that this elderly woman is out to explore all possibilities, including the sexual, the feminist, and simply a world where she controls her own destiny. At no point does she settle down with a man, but through her imagination visits worlds where she and other women are basically in control of their societies and activities. This is most definitely, as the title suggests, a kind of rainbow world, something clearly outside of normative society.

 

Los Angeles, July 21, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).