Loving Annabelle -- a long-winded response
Last night I rewatched Loving Annabelle for the first time since I purchased the DVD upon its release. This was the first DVD I ever pre-ordered, having been so taken with the trailer that I couldn't wait to see it. When it finally arrived I eagerly devoured it, but despite its being a gorgeous and well-scored film and very thought-provoking, I was left unsatisfied when the end credits rolled.
Seeing it again, my opinion hasn't changed, but I've started to pin down exactly what caused this reaction.
Loving Annabelle disappointed me, and I blame the captivating trailer -- which gives away pretty much the whole film, but being the sucker I am, I assumed it was teasing things to come and so expected much more, plotwise -- and the slogan printed on the cover of the DVD package, which I feel doesn't accurately describe the film:
"One student, one teacher, one secret."
This slogan actually describes roughly 7 minutes of screentime between Annabelle and Simone's passionate love scene and the end credits. For the other 64 minutes, there is no secret, unless it's attraction, and that's pretty sketchy because Annabelle's feelings, at least, are known to everyone. What you have for the bulk of the film is a student who wants her teacher and a teacher who finds her increasingly hard to resist.
The tension of this premise is diminished by the expectation (and I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who was absolutely certain) that Annabelle and Simone will inevitably act on their attraction. The only question that remains is, what will happen after that? What fallout will they have to deal with? How will other characters (Mother Immaculata, Cat, Collins, Annabelle's mother) react? How will Annabelle and Simone be changed by this development?
Which brings me to another complaint -- there is very little character development in this film. Simone is the only one who changes or learns, with Annabelle as the catalyst for those changes, helping her both to let go of and embrace her past (Amanda) and encouraging her to break the rules (against homosexuality, against teacher/student relationships).
"Breaking the rules" is a common theme among lesbian films (since homosexuality continues to be a big no-no in most quarters) and especially in "coming out" films. I find these stories often have fairly fixed character types. Look at Desert Hearts -- Vivian, the character who discovers an attraction to women, is a professor while Cay, the object of that attraction, is an artist (and also works in a casino, but that's just to pay the bills). In When Night is Falling, Camille is a teacher at a Christian school who's "converted" by Petra, a circus performer. See a pattern developing here?
Why teachers? I think it's because they're living embodiments of rules and conventions. Their work and by extension their lives are regimented by timetables and cirricula dictated from above, and they're charged with corralling young minds into these same structures -- indoctrinating the next generation. It's extra dramatic for these women to be tempted to colour outside the lines.
Why artists? Because the "free spirit," the creative type, makes a good contrast to the rule-bound persona of the teacher. She's presented as more in touch with her emotions, more willing to take risks. She's the chaos that threatens the order of the protagonist's straight life.
Into this tradition comes Simone, a teacher at a repressive Catholic school. Like Vivian and Camille before her, she teaches literature (perhaps because there's not much opportunity for flirting in discussions of binomials, subatomic particles or the periodic table). And Annabelle is a musician. Her art only really comes into play during one climactic scene, but her guitar is present from the start and is one of the first signifiers (along with cigarettes, nose ring and those controversial prayer beads) of Annabelle's unconventionality, her potential to challenge the status quo. (Cat mockingly calls her "rock star" in their first meeting.)
Of course Loving Annabelle isn't a "coming out" film per se, since Simone has had a female lover before Annabelle -- Amanda, who is associated in the story with rule-breaking (Father Harris reminisces about Simone and Amanda stealing sacramental wine when they were students). The implication is that Simone once led a wilder life, but after Amanda died, she turned back to the establishment -- became a teacher, surrendered to the control of Mother Immaculata, and dated (as far as we know) only men -- in hopes of protecting herself against the heartbreak that came with her unconventional love. So in effect she has to come out all over again, and the themes are much the same as in the more straightforward straight-woman-falls-for-lesbian stories.
And that's why those first 64 minutes seem to waste a lot of time, in my eyes -- because we know where it's going. We know that model of institutional rigidity is going to break down and do the deed with that wild child. What sets Loving Annabelle apart (the extra-super-duper forbiddeness of the teacher/student relationship) could have been the factor that produced a more complex story, something we've never seen before.
I applaud writer/director Katherine Brooks for turning on its head the much-feared myth of the homosexual teacher corrupting innocent young girls, making Annabelle the aggressor trying to seduce Simone, who struggles with the morality of breaking this taboo. The switch makes it all the more frustrating when the characters are discovered together and swiftly, devastatingly separated. (At this point I have to ask, why didn't they lock the bedroom door? It's the only part of the story that doesn't ring true for me.) We know Simone's punishment is going to be much harsher than Annabelle's -- we see her taken from the school in police custody -- even though Annabelle not only consented to the sexual encounter but instigated it, instigated every step of their relationship. I consider this one of the most interesting things about the film, but we don't get to explore it because we're already in the denouement, speeding toward the final (admittedly beautiful) frame.
By no means do I protest the ending of this film because it's not a happy one or because I feel it's unfair. Their actions are illegal and punishment is unavoidable in the "real" world in which this story takes place. A happy ending, or any other ending at all, would have been a huge cop-out. But so much screentime has been devoted to showing us that this relationship, despite the age difference and the resulting power imbalance (more or less nullified by Simone's vulnerability and Annabelle's confidence), is not wrong. The laws in question are there to protect children from being preyed on by immoral adults and that is clearly not the case here. Annabelle is not being taken advantage of. Their connection isn't about power, nor is based on sex alone (although you could be tempted to say that if it weren't for the stuff dealing with Amanda, the emotional resonance of the scenes at the beachhouse).
This places the film in another long tradition -- lovers kept apart by structures out of their control (shades of Romeo and Juliet). Again, what's interesting about that kind of story is how they overcome the obstacles, or don't. I would have liked to see Annabelle and Simone address their particular situation. What I'm talking about is not an alternate ending but a restructuring of the whole movie where the consummation scene isn't the climax but rather takes place earlier so that there's more time for an exploration of the consequences.
In short, I wish the film had made good on the promises of the trailer and the slogan. I would have liked to see a film in which one student and one teacher actually live with their secret (that they've broken the rules by sleeping together), keep it or don't keep it, and deal with the repercussions either way.
Seeing it again, my opinion hasn't changed, but I've started to pin down exactly what caused this reaction.
Loving Annabelle disappointed me, and I blame the captivating trailer -- which gives away pretty much the whole film, but being the sucker I am, I assumed it was teasing things to come and so expected much more, plotwise -- and the slogan printed on the cover of the DVD package, which I feel doesn't accurately describe the film:
"One student, one teacher, one secret."
This slogan actually describes roughly 7 minutes of screentime between Annabelle and Simone's passionate love scene and the end credits. For the other 64 minutes, there is no secret, unless it's attraction, and that's pretty sketchy because Annabelle's feelings, at least, are known to everyone. What you have for the bulk of the film is a student who wants her teacher and a teacher who finds her increasingly hard to resist.
The tension of this premise is diminished by the expectation (and I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who was absolutely certain) that Annabelle and Simone will inevitably act on their attraction. The only question that remains is, what will happen after that? What fallout will they have to deal with? How will other characters (Mother Immaculata, Cat, Collins, Annabelle's mother) react? How will Annabelle and Simone be changed by this development?
Which brings me to another complaint -- there is very little character development in this film. Simone is the only one who changes or learns, with Annabelle as the catalyst for those changes, helping her both to let go of and embrace her past (Amanda) and encouraging her to break the rules (against homosexuality, against teacher/student relationships).
"Breaking the rules" is a common theme among lesbian films (since homosexuality continues to be a big no-no in most quarters) and especially in "coming out" films. I find these stories often have fairly fixed character types. Look at Desert Hearts -- Vivian, the character who discovers an attraction to women, is a professor while Cay, the object of that attraction, is an artist (and also works in a casino, but that's just to pay the bills). In When Night is Falling, Camille is a teacher at a Christian school who's "converted" by Petra, a circus performer. See a pattern developing here?
Why teachers? I think it's because they're living embodiments of rules and conventions. Their work and by extension their lives are regimented by timetables and cirricula dictated from above, and they're charged with corralling young minds into these same structures -- indoctrinating the next generation. It's extra dramatic for these women to be tempted to colour outside the lines.
Why artists? Because the "free spirit," the creative type, makes a good contrast to the rule-bound persona of the teacher. She's presented as more in touch with her emotions, more willing to take risks. She's the chaos that threatens the order of the protagonist's straight life.
Into this tradition comes Simone, a teacher at a repressive Catholic school. Like Vivian and Camille before her, she teaches literature (perhaps because there's not much opportunity for flirting in discussions of binomials, subatomic particles or the periodic table). And Annabelle is a musician. Her art only really comes into play during one climactic scene, but her guitar is present from the start and is one of the first signifiers (along with cigarettes, nose ring and those controversial prayer beads) of Annabelle's unconventionality, her potential to challenge the status quo. (Cat mockingly calls her "rock star" in their first meeting.)
Of course Loving Annabelle isn't a "coming out" film per se, since Simone has had a female lover before Annabelle -- Amanda, who is associated in the story with rule-breaking (Father Harris reminisces about Simone and Amanda stealing sacramental wine when they were students). The implication is that Simone once led a wilder life, but after Amanda died, she turned back to the establishment -- became a teacher, surrendered to the control of Mother Immaculata, and dated (as far as we know) only men -- in hopes of protecting herself against the heartbreak that came with her unconventional love. So in effect she has to come out all over again, and the themes are much the same as in the more straightforward straight-woman-falls-for-lesbian stories.
And that's why those first 64 minutes seem to waste a lot of time, in my eyes -- because we know where it's going. We know that model of institutional rigidity is going to break down and do the deed with that wild child. What sets Loving Annabelle apart (the extra-super-duper forbiddeness of the teacher/student relationship) could have been the factor that produced a more complex story, something we've never seen before.
I applaud writer/director Katherine Brooks for turning on its head the much-feared myth of the homosexual teacher corrupting innocent young girls, making Annabelle the aggressor trying to seduce Simone, who struggles with the morality of breaking this taboo. The switch makes it all the more frustrating when the characters are discovered together and swiftly, devastatingly separated. (At this point I have to ask, why didn't they lock the bedroom door? It's the only part of the story that doesn't ring true for me.) We know Simone's punishment is going to be much harsher than Annabelle's -- we see her taken from the school in police custody -- even though Annabelle not only consented to the sexual encounter but instigated it, instigated every step of their relationship. I consider this one of the most interesting things about the film, but we don't get to explore it because we're already in the denouement, speeding toward the final (admittedly beautiful) frame.
By no means do I protest the ending of this film because it's not a happy one or because I feel it's unfair. Their actions are illegal and punishment is unavoidable in the "real" world in which this story takes place. A happy ending, or any other ending at all, would have been a huge cop-out. But so much screentime has been devoted to showing us that this relationship, despite the age difference and the resulting power imbalance (more or less nullified by Simone's vulnerability and Annabelle's confidence), is not wrong. The laws in question are there to protect children from being preyed on by immoral adults and that is clearly not the case here. Annabelle is not being taken advantage of. Their connection isn't about power, nor is based on sex alone (although you could be tempted to say that if it weren't for the stuff dealing with Amanda, the emotional resonance of the scenes at the beachhouse).
This places the film in another long tradition -- lovers kept apart by structures out of their control (shades of Romeo and Juliet). Again, what's interesting about that kind of story is how they overcome the obstacles, or don't. I would have liked to see Annabelle and Simone address their particular situation. What I'm talking about is not an alternate ending but a restructuring of the whole movie where the consummation scene isn't the climax but rather takes place earlier so that there's more time for an exploration of the consequences.
In short, I wish the film had made good on the promises of the trailer and the slogan. I would have liked to see a film in which one student and one teacher actually live with their secret (that they've broken the rules by sleeping together), keep it or don't keep it, and deal with the repercussions either way.