Dir. Ol Parker, 2005, USA/UK/Germany, 94 mins
Cast: Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode
Review by Carol Allen
Although there have been plenty of mainstream features about gay men both in film and television, from Philadelphia and Gods and Monsters to Queer as Folk, apart from Tipping the Velvet (television again), movies about gay women have largely tended to be limited to the American independent sector (Desert Hearts, Chasing Amy, Boys Don't Cry). So it's a bit of a surprise to have two home-made lesbian stories opening this summer. Gay women, and indeed general audiences, will have to wait until September to see Nina's Heavenly Delights, which is set in Glasgow's Asian community and has a strong culinary element. Imagine Me and You , which is a variation on the eternal triangle theme, is in the cinemas now.
It is set in London, where long-term, middle-class professional couple Heck and Rachel (Goode and Perabo) are getting married. Rachel strikes up a friendship with Luce (Headey), the florist who is doing the wedding flowers and invites her to the wedding. After the wedding, they become best girl friends, until Rachel begins to realise that not only is her new friend gay, but she is beginning to fall in love with her.
The three young principles give the film a lot of charm. Lena Headey is a good actress, who's added a touch of thespian class to a lot of sometimes undistinguished movies, e.g. The Parole Officer and The Brothers Grimm and she is engaging here as the confident and likeable Luce. For reasons best known to himself, writer/director Parker was determined to cast American Perabo as the very English Rachel, but she manages the accent without apparent effort, while up-and-coming Goode as her husband is touching in his bewilderment and hurt. While being OK with the romantic comedy aspects, Parker seems very uneasy with the gay theme, not at all sure how to come to grips with it. And anyone expecting hot girl-on-girl action will be disappointed. Good though the two women are, as often happens with lesbian characters in movies, they do fall into the "lipstick lesbian" category of being highly attractive young women, who will appeal to heterosexual men. And I would question the absolute nature of the film's message - if that's what you can call it - that passion in a relationship, as between Rachel and Luce, is much more important than the stability and friendship she found in her marriage. Romance per se, as we all know, is a notoriously volatile element.
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