Even the wholesome Canadians in Forbidden Love indulge in crème de menthe. From alcoholic writer Djuna Barnes (in the documentary Paris Was a Woman) to fictional junkies like Patricia Clarkson in High Art, “Sapph-o-Rama” is full of hard-living, hard-partying gals.
Make that a double For years, the portrayal of lesbians as butches with chemical dependencies was deemed homophobic, but it’s easier now to appreciate the humanity behind the clichés. Figures of authority like teachers and madames can be brutally repressive and fiercely sexy, a dichotomy graphically embodied by Agnes Moorehead’s reformist superintendent and Hope Emerson’s sadistic warden in Caged. Shut up and strip Boarding schools, bordellos, high-level athletics, prisons: These single-sex institutions inevitably lead to communal showering, catfights, and sexual experimentation. Here’s a handy guide to the spectacular array of lesbian film formulas, in all their tawdry glory.
“Sapph-o-Rama” demonstrates that our definition of a “lesbian cult classic” is now wide enough to include the coming-out favorite Desert Hearts and the trashiest lesboploitation. Books like Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet and Andrea Weiss’s Vampires and Violets have chronicled the negative portrayals of lesbians in film, but the passage of time allows us to empathize with these drunken bulldaggers in doomed relationships and other larger-than-life characters. You get out of the habit.” Film Forum might as well post this warning from the bleak 1950 noir Caged during its touching, sexy, sad, and often hilarious “Sapph-o-Rama” series. “If you stay here too long, you don’t think of guys at all. Caged heat: Agnes Moorehead reforms Eleanor Parker.
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