Lush, Romantic, and Beautiful

DESERT HEARTS proves that a truly great romance does not necessarily have to fit the boy-meets-girl" paradigm; this love story between two women is gorgeous, achingly romantic, and sensual and tender in equal measure.

The setting is Reno NV in the 1950s, and director Donna Deitch has invested her film with a gorgeous sense of both the time and the place. Vivian Bell, a professor of English at Columbia, arrives on the train, as so many women did in those days, to get a divorce. We are never really given a concrete reason for the divorce except that she is clearly an unhappy woman.

There are a few similarities here to the 1939 film THE WOMEN; Vivian comes to stay at a ranch, run by a blowzy woman named Frances Parker, played to a fare-thee-well by the late Audra Lindley, who manages to recall Marjorie Main in the 1939 film while at the same time creating a character completely unique and original.

Among the ranch denizens is Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau), Frances's stepdaughter and an outspoken Lesbian at a time when Lesbians were not outspoken. In the course of events, she meets Vivian and the attraction between the two is immediate.

I really don't need to reveal too much. Romances tend to follow a certain formula, and this one is no exception, with the added tension of Vivian's difficulty in coming out (if only to herself) and the near-destruction of the bond between Cay and Frances, who loves her stepdaughter but can't understand Lesbianism. What really places this film high in the pantheon of LGBT love stories is the romance. Like MAURICE two years later and LATTER DAYS almost two decades later, the relationship is passionate, sensual, and the sex scenes are beautifully shot, so that what we are observing is not just sex but lovemaking.

Shaver and Charbonneau are electric here; the sparks fly between them from the first moment they set eyes on each other, and they continue right up to the final scene. And in addition to Lindley we are treated to a great supporting cast, most notably Andra Akers as Cay's friend (and possibly sometime lover), who in the course of the film marries a man who seems to know all about her. For a film set in the 1950s there is a refreshing openness to many of the characters that smashes stereotypes and breathes extra life into an already exciting film.

This is a great film, one of the best romances I have ever seen (regardless of the genders of the parties involved). Dietch and Company proved here that a great romantic movie can be made with two women, or two men, or a man and a woman, so long as the characters and their emotions are as genuine as they are here.

This one is a must-see.

Oh God. There's nothing more inconvenient than an old queen with a head cold!