Cinema Sunday: Desert Hearts

In last week's Cinema Sunday, I looked back at two movies I've seen over the last couple of years; both were romantic dramas with two women in the lead, one who knows of the ways of lesbian love and one who is new to the whole thing and set in the 1950's. 

Today we look at another movie that is a romantic drama with two women in the lead, one who knows of the ways of lesbian love and one who is new to the whole thing and set in the 1950's. 

Is this like some kind of separate genre?

Maybe this is part of a specific pitch for lesbian themed dramas. 

Screenwriter: I have a script for a romantic drama.

Producer: So?

Screenwriter:  With two women in the lead...

Producer: TWO women, you say?

Screenwriter: Yes and one of the women knows of the ways of lesbian love...

Producer: And is the other woman new to this whole thing?

Screenwriter: Why, yes, that's it exactly!

Producer: Can it be set in the 1950's?

The screenwriter looks down at the title page of her screenplay: "Lesbians In a Time of Coronavirus". 

Screenwriter: Yeah, why not? 

Anyway, on to Desert Hearts.

It's 1959 and Vivian Bell, a 35-year-old English professor at Columbia University in New York City, has arrived in Reno, Nevada to get divorced. You can get a divorce in Nevada quick with no fuss and no muss but you have to be a resident of Nevada to do that. The establish residency in Nevada, you have to stick around for six weeks. 





Vivian arranges to stay at a guest house ranch for women who are waiting for their divorces to be finalized. It is here that Vivian meets Cay Rivvers, a 25 year old free spirited female sculptor. Cay immediately is drawn to the proper, elegant Vivian.  Cay has had relationships with women in the past. Vivian has (you guessed it) no experience with this sort of thing.

While overlooking Lake Tahoe one night, Cay kisses Vivian. Vivian, much to her surprise, kisses her right back. Passionately.

Vivian moves out of the ranch house to a hotel where Cay follows her and after strongly insisting that Cay should leave, Vivian puts the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and slips into bed with Cay.  For a really long late night Cinemax quality sex scene complete with mood lighting and saxophone music. 

(My memory's a bit fuzzy about the saxophone music. If there was no sax with the sex, then that was an oversight by the director. There should always be sax with sex in the movies.)

When the six weeks are up, Vivian is officially divorced and can head on back to New York City. The movie doesn't end with Vivian and Cay in love for happily ever after but it doesn end with Cay agreeing to ride with Vivian on the train out of Reno to at least the next stop.

Unlike the two films from last week's post which were produced within the last 2 to 5 years, Desert Hearts goes all the way back to 1985. Which makes the forthright and frank perspective on a positive lesbian relationship all the more remarkable.

I don't remember the how and why I came to see this movie back in the late 1980's a few years after it was released but I remember that what struck me about this movie was how normal it all was. Swap out Cay with a 25 year old free spirited MALE sculptor and a lot of the dynamic with Vivian remains unchanged: a woman in her 30's from a background of education and eastern big city sophistication in a passionate romance with a younger, less refined lover.  The idea that Vivian's lover is another woman rattles her at first but it is not the only thing.

Reviews of Desert Hearts were not always kind when it was first released, owing perhaps to outdated and/or uninformed views of homosexuality.  For example, Vincent Canby of the New York Times complained that "we are not given enough information about the quality of Vivian's broken marriage, asking if perhaps her lesbianism was a hysterical reaction to her divorce."  Film historian Vito Russo's comment on Canby's complaint was that "this is the point at which many heterosexual critics disqualify themselves from perceptively reviewing gay films."

Swap out Cay with a 25 year old free spirited MALE sculptor and I bet Canby wouldn't be attributing her affair as a hysterical reaction to her divorce."

"Hysterical"? Desert Hearts came out in 1985. Vincent Canby was writing his review with a quill pen in 1785. 

I happened upon Desert Hearts again recently while channel surfing late one night/morning. The seams of director Donna Deitch's shoe string budget seem obvious to me. But she does a great job of evoking the era of the 1950's and the performances of Helen Shaver as Vivian and Patricia Charbonneau as Cay really carry this movie. It is not a great movie but it is not a bad one either.  It is simply a good movie about two unlikely people falling in love in Reno, NV in 1959.