Hungry eyes

Lesbians have a love/hate relationship with lesbian movies. We love to watch them, but we hate how bad they often are. As any nascent lesbian going through her I-must-consume-every-lesbian-movie-ever-made phase can tell you, not all lesbian movies are created equal. In fact, don’t tell the religious right this, but instead of using their so-called “ex-gay” therapies, they’d have much better results by forcing us to watch “Bar Girls” and “Claire of the Moon” on a continuous loop. They’re almost bad enough to turn even the gayest gal straight. Almost.

So this weekend, I thought I’d have a lezzer movie binge and watch one I’d never seen before. Somehow, despite my best intentions, I’d never had a chance to catch “Nina’s Heavenly Delights.” This is kind of crazy considering 1) the cast is crazy gorgeous and 2) it’s about food. Hello, gorgeous people and food consumer a good 85 percent of my waking thoughts. And it was also nice to see Shelley Conn and Laura Fraser in earlier roles, since I’ve seen both subsequently in other projects (“Mistresses” and “Lip Service,” most recently).

Was it a great film? No. Choppy plotting, uneven characterizations, contrived situations. Also, I could have done without ghost dad. I felt at any minute Whoopi Goldberg might show up and say, “Nina, you in danger, girl.” But it was cute in its own way and had so much pretty to look at in the form of Shelley and Laura that I can forgive it some of its sins. But, yeah, it’s not going on my iPhone next to “Imagine Me and You,” or anything.

What it did give us was one truly sexy moment between Shelley’s Nina and Laura’s Lisa. And I’m not talking about any of the kisses, though they were nice. They really were. But, what I thought worked best in the film was its hunger. And not just for chicken xacuti. I mean the other kind of hunger. Laura in particular does a lovely job of conveying her hunger, with her big eyes and eager face. It’s also a testament to her acting abilities that I find her entirely winsome in this film whereas I find Cat on “Lip Service” a tad irritating. But right, back to the scene.

Right, now if the whole movie had been like those 19 seconds, well, that would have been truly heavenly.