This Fall sees not one, but three new major independent movies with Lesbian plots being released, and social media is all abuzz that an actress may finally get an illusive ‘Best Actress Oscar’ for going gay. Two of the movies star two actresses who have already collected their gold Statutes for playing straight, and another two actresses who have already been nominated too, so we are talking Hollywood ‘A’ List, which should guarantee some excellent qualifying performances.
Lionsgate Films caused quite a stir this week when they released the first trailer for ‘FREEHELD’. It is based on the true story of a lesbian couple, Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree who fought for domestic partner rights for same-sex couples a decade ago, helping to pave the way today. After Hester, a police officer in Ocean County New Jersey, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2005, she repeatedly appealed to the County Board to ensure her pension benefits could be passed on to Andree.
The movie stars last year’s Oscar Winner Julianne Moore who has previous played part of a lesbian couple with Annette Benning in ‘The Kids Are Alright.’ Benning was nominated for an Oscar and also for a Golden Globe along with Moore, whom she pipped at the post to win. In ‘Freeheld’, Moore’s co-star is Oscar Nominated (and out proud lesbian) Ellen Page. The movie, adapted from Cynthia Wade’s 2007 Oscar Winning Short Documentary, is being directed by Peter Sollett from a script written by Roy Nyswaner (Oscar nominated writer for ’Philadelphia’).
In May the talk at the Cannes Film Festival was all about Todd Haynes’s wonderful new movie ‘CAROL’ starring two-time Oscar Winner Cate Blanchett and Oscar Nominee Rooney Mara as a 1950’s controversial lesbian couple. In a story based on Patricia Highsmith’s ahead-of-its-time novel ‘The Price of Salt’, the women defy all of society’s conventions in this very deep and profound love story. Its premiere was met with a great deal of excitement and rave reviews with both actresses tipped to win the Cannes Best Actress Award, with Rooney finally snatching the trophy in the end. In Press interviews to promote the movie, Blanchett admitted that she had affairs with both women and men in the past which added a whole new frisson to our expectations.
We can see from the trailer that like so much of Haynes’s other work (‘Far From Heaven’, Velvet Goldmine’ and the remake of ‘Mildred Pierce’) that ‘Carol’ is highly visually stunning too, but we will have to wait until this Christmas 2015 to see it for ourselves. This is however not the first time that openly-gay Haynes has worked with Blanchett, as in his movie on Bob Dylan’s life ‘I’m Not There’ she played a non-specific gender version of the singer, which gained her yet another Oscar Nomination.
In 2007 Blanchett collected her third Oscar nomination for ‘Notes On A Scandal’ in which she played a straight schoolteacher who was being stalked by a closeted lesbian who had designs on her, in another Oscar nominated performance by Judi Dench. Neither women won.
The final new movie of this trio, and the first one to be released is ‘JENNY’S WEDDING’, and is by far the weakest. It stars Golden Globe Nominee Katherine Heigl playing a closeted lesbian who has to come out to her conservative family. The movie has been playing the Film Festival circuit this summer and has been garnering indifferent reviews for both the movie, and Heigl in particular. Some even went as far to note that they thought she was playing ‘gay’ to try and revive her flagging career which is in the doldrums since her last few movies have bombed. From all accounts we shouldn’t expect to see her at any Award Ceremonies this year, let alone at the Oscars.
The Academy Awards has a very lame history for honoring both out-gay actors and heterosexual ones who play ‘gay for pay’. Their record to date can be best described as ‘spotty’, but after some flagrant refusals to give some the Awards that were truly deserved, (think Ian MacKellan in ‘Gods & Monsters’ or Felicity Huffman in ‘Transamerica’ or denying ‘Brokeback Mountain’ the Best Picture Award, which was so rightly theirs) one has to think it reeks of blatant homophobia. There are at least a handful of notable exceptions for straight men like Sean Penn for playing Harvey Milk, Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, and William Hurt for his role as Luis Molina in ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman’, but even so there is no openly gay actor in Oscar’s history who has ever won. (Technically there is actually now one, as Joel Grey ‘came out’ decades after he had won for ‘Cabaret’.)
When it comes to gay women, or those playing gay, then the Academy’s score is pathetic. Right back to 1961 when William Wyler’s classic cult movie version of Lillian Hellman’s play ‘THE LITTLE CHILDREN’ about two lesbian schoolteachers picked up an unprecedented 5 Oscar Nominations for categories such as Best Costume Design and Best Sound, and even one for young Fay Bainter who played a precious child, but nothing at all for its amazing Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. So far we’ve had Hilary Swank collecting her first Oscar for playing transgendered Brando Teena in ‘BOYS DON’T CRY’, and Jodie Foster who collected both of her Best Actress Oscars before she came out of the closet.We have had more out-lesbians M.C.’ing the Oscars than actually winning Awards and it’s way past time that the Academy changed all that. We will probably still have to wait some time for that to happen, but so far it at least it looks very much like when it comes to playing a lesbian on the silver screen, then this could finally be the lucky year for at least one actress. Maybe even two.
