alack alas
It seems i have come to the end of my lesbian fling with Netflix, for now...
Clara's Summer: French, 2002. I realized at the end of this film that the whole thing takes place in one week...like a Disney movie. Strange. Anyway, cute little french girls, Clara and Zo, are BFFs and they make a pact to get laid during their week at away camp on the sea shore. They make this pact while washing each other in a bathtub, but don't let that color your judgement of their sincerity. I think these girls are supposed to be about 16-17, not sure though. So, Zo is a nice girl with short hair and she sets her sights on Sebastian, one of a number of dumb-tool boys at the summer camp. He does seem to be the nicest of the idiots though, so maybe Zo isn't all that stupid. Clara has excessively long and matted dark hair and big dark eyes. I think the boys would be all over her if she got a major haircut, but as it stands, they don't even see her and she spends most of the movie invisibly moving on the sidelines.
Zo is not so much into the whole "bros before hos" thought process or is it, "chicks before dicks"? Anyway. She totally disses Clara and just chases after the dumb boy. They are invited to a party on a rooftop where all the cool kids are drinking and smoking. The dumb-tool boys all make fun of Clara and Zo for showing up without bringing anything to the party. Zo gets really pissed at "Seb," who goes up and whispers an apology to her. She insists he say sorry in front of all his dumb-tool friends, but he can not break free of peer pressure and they all just laugh at her some more. She runs down to the beach to cry with Clara. On the beach, she makes a move on Clara, claiming that boys are horrible and that they should just be with each other. Clara is more than a little freaked out by this going on about unnatural acts and so on and tries to comfort her friend while avoiding Zo's tongue in her ear....good times...At this point, I was like, "uh oh, things are going to get messy real fast."
I forgot to mention another character, Sonia, who is supposed to be totally cool because she shows up to summer camp late, in a convertible with some unknown dude and wearing a Britany Spears hat...She is apparently a bisexual and proudly so. when the other kids find out about that aspect, her cool ratings plummet and they resort to torturing her and trying to make her life hell, I suppose. Anyway, since Clara rejects Zo's advances, Zo runs off and is pissed about Clara and doesn't want to talk to her, though they share a cabin. Clara wanders around a lot, all by herself, with no friends until Sonia sort of takes her under her wing...in a slightly predatory way.
Long story short, Clara sleeps with Sonia and then is really scared of the social repercussions and lies about it and says mean things about Sonia. There is something about a sister's wedding and Zo comes around after Sebastian says she is being really mean to her former friend (remember this all takes place in one week, right?) and that this is not cool...awwww, dumb-tool boy grew a conscience...cute. Oh, at one point, before she sleeps with Sonia, Clara goes on a low-self esteem bender and tries to sleep with any guy that will have her...it only takes her two tries to get one willing to do it on the beach...boys are easy.
Take-aways from this movie: high school sucks in any country...and boys are easy.
The Investigator: British, 1997. Woo hoo! British-made movies, even TV movies always seem to have more depth and character development than American ones...though poorer production quality...interesting. This movie centers on Sgt Caroline Meagher who is an investigator for the royal army people. She rises through the ranks looking into poor conduct and army guys that beat their women and all that stuff. She identifies as being "one of the lads," and can play stupid messy British drinking games with the lot of them! Chug chug chug!
She is reassigned to a special investigation to break up a "lesbian ring" in Scotland or Northern England...some place north. investigating lesbians comes down to stealing all their correspondence and asking them nasty, graphic questions about what they physically do to each other. Caroline squirms while witnessing the interrogations, feeling like the questions are way too personal and disturbing. She mumbles something to that effect to her boss and he says she can't be soft on these people. She wonders what is so wrong about women doing women and he replies "we can't choose which restrictions we enforce," and I guess that is good enough reason for the time being.
She continues getting more upset about this until her roommate goes and admits to her that she is a lesbian. Caroline is freaked! "Why are you telling me this? Don't you know how dangerous that is?" and then goes a bit nuts crying and trying to convince her friend to hide whatever about her life. While crying and freaking out, her friend decides to make a move and starts kissing Caroline...and I guess that is a move that works, because she and Caroline have their clothes off in T minus five minutes. Cause.....crying is always a turn on for me too...hm (sarcasm).
Anyways, we basically go through a strange time-switching elongated montage of Caroline's life for the next few years and how she tries to have a relationship with a guy, but rejects his engagement proposal (poor guy looks really sad but fatalistic about it). She starts living with a woman in Scotland who is a school teacher and also not out (this is in the late 80's/early 90's). She is all happy and has apparently had a lot of relationships with different women over the past few years. This is all interspersed with her being interrogated by army guys trying to get her to confess to being a lesbian....they found letters in her stuffed tiger, always damning. She knows her way around answering these questions and what questions they will ask.
She manages not to give them a confession, but they find her guilty of abusing army resources because she had been claiming to visit her "fiance" when she had actually been visiting her girlfriend, and they kick her out for that.
The very end has the real Caroline giving a public service announcement (basically) about how many people have been kicked out of the army due to being found conducting "unnatural acts" with members of their own sex. sad! This was in 1997, so I don't know how things have changed in Great Britain.
Take-aways: crying is crack to lesbians...there are TONS of lesbians in the army, no matter what country, I suppose.
My next movie is "Assassination of Jesse James" with Brad Pitt...we are definitely out of lesbian-ville.
Clara's Summer: French, 2002. I realized at the end of this film that the whole thing takes place in one week...like a Disney movie. Strange. Anyway, cute little french girls, Clara and Zo, are BFFs and they make a pact to get laid during their week at away camp on the sea shore. They make this pact while washing each other in a bathtub, but don't let that color your judgement of their sincerity. I think these girls are supposed to be about 16-17, not sure though. So, Zo is a nice girl with short hair and she sets her sights on Sebastian, one of a number of dumb-tool boys at the summer camp. He does seem to be the nicest of the idiots though, so maybe Zo isn't all that stupid. Clara has excessively long and matted dark hair and big dark eyes. I think the boys would be all over her if she got a major haircut, but as it stands, they don't even see her and she spends most of the movie invisibly moving on the sidelines.
Zo is not so much into the whole "bros before hos" thought process or is it, "chicks before dicks"? Anyway. She totally disses Clara and just chases after the dumb boy. They are invited to a party on a rooftop where all the cool kids are drinking and smoking. The dumb-tool boys all make fun of Clara and Zo for showing up without bringing anything to the party. Zo gets really pissed at "Seb," who goes up and whispers an apology to her. She insists he say sorry in front of all his dumb-tool friends, but he can not break free of peer pressure and they all just laugh at her some more. She runs down to the beach to cry with Clara. On the beach, she makes a move on Clara, claiming that boys are horrible and that they should just be with each other. Clara is more than a little freaked out by this going on about unnatural acts and so on and tries to comfort her friend while avoiding Zo's tongue in her ear....good times...At this point, I was like, "uh oh, things are going to get messy real fast."
I forgot to mention another character, Sonia, who is supposed to be totally cool because she shows up to summer camp late, in a convertible with some unknown dude and wearing a Britany Spears hat...She is apparently a bisexual and proudly so. when the other kids find out about that aspect, her cool ratings plummet and they resort to torturing her and trying to make her life hell, I suppose. Anyway, since Clara rejects Zo's advances, Zo runs off and is pissed about Clara and doesn't want to talk to her, though they share a cabin. Clara wanders around a lot, all by herself, with no friends until Sonia sort of takes her under her wing...in a slightly predatory way.
Long story short, Clara sleeps with Sonia and then is really scared of the social repercussions and lies about it and says mean things about Sonia. There is something about a sister's wedding and Zo comes around after Sebastian says she is being really mean to her former friend (remember this all takes place in one week, right?) and that this is not cool...awwww, dumb-tool boy grew a conscience...cute. Oh, at one point, before she sleeps with Sonia, Clara goes on a low-self esteem bender and tries to sleep with any guy that will have her...it only takes her two tries to get one willing to do it on the beach...boys are easy.
Take-aways from this movie: high school sucks in any country...and boys are easy.
The Investigator: British, 1997. Woo hoo! British-made movies, even TV movies always seem to have more depth and character development than American ones...though poorer production quality...interesting. This movie centers on Sgt Caroline Meagher who is an investigator for the royal army people. She rises through the ranks looking into poor conduct and army guys that beat their women and all that stuff. She identifies as being "one of the lads," and can play stupid messy British drinking games with the lot of them! Chug chug chug!
She is reassigned to a special investigation to break up a "lesbian ring" in Scotland or Northern England...some place north. investigating lesbians comes down to stealing all their correspondence and asking them nasty, graphic questions about what they physically do to each other. Caroline squirms while witnessing the interrogations, feeling like the questions are way too personal and disturbing. She mumbles something to that effect to her boss and he says she can't be soft on these people. She wonders what is so wrong about women doing women and he replies "we can't choose which restrictions we enforce," and I guess that is good enough reason for the time being.
She continues getting more upset about this until her roommate goes and admits to her that she is a lesbian. Caroline is freaked! "Why are you telling me this? Don't you know how dangerous that is?" and then goes a bit nuts crying and trying to convince her friend to hide whatever about her life. While crying and freaking out, her friend decides to make a move and starts kissing Caroline...and I guess that is a move that works, because she and Caroline have their clothes off in T minus five minutes. Cause.....crying is always a turn on for me too...hm (sarcasm).
Anyways, we basically go through a strange time-switching elongated montage of Caroline's life for the next few years and how she tries to have a relationship with a guy, but rejects his engagement proposal (poor guy looks really sad but fatalistic about it). She starts living with a woman in Scotland who is a school teacher and also not out (this is in the late 80's/early 90's). She is all happy and has apparently had a lot of relationships with different women over the past few years. This is all interspersed with her being interrogated by army guys trying to get her to confess to being a lesbian....they found letters in her stuffed tiger, always damning. She knows her way around answering these questions and what questions they will ask.
She manages not to give them a confession, but they find her guilty of abusing army resources because she had been claiming to visit her "fiance" when she had actually been visiting her girlfriend, and they kick her out for that.
The very end has the real Caroline giving a public service announcement (basically) about how many people have been kicked out of the army due to being found conducting "unnatural acts" with members of their own sex. sad! This was in 1997, so I don't know how things have changed in Great Britain.
Take-aways: crying is crack to lesbians...there are TONS of lesbians in the army, no matter what country, I suppose.
My next movie is "Assassination of Jesse James" with Brad Pitt...we are definitely out of lesbian-ville.