Spit Take

“Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams Have Incredible Sex in Disobedience”

Well, hello – now there’s a headline. It’s almost enough to set the Lesbian Bat Signal up to “Carol” levels of anticipation. I’ve written about their new film “Disobedience” before. The pair play childhood friends from an Orthodox Jewish community who rekindle their illicit relationship as adults. And now that it has premiered at Toronto the reviews have started to come in, and they’re good. And then there’s that headline, which certainly makes every gay gal I know want to click the link. If you don’t want spoilers for the plot, stop reading now. If you want to know what qualifies as “incredible sex,” read on:

Apparently the two women (Rachel Weisz as Ronit, a photographer who has left her conservative upbringing to live in New York, and Rachel McAdams as Esti, a schoolteacher who remains in the orthodox community and is married to a man), finally hook up in a hotel where the “mind-blowing meeting of the Rachels can finally be released.” And I quote:

The two drink each other in again, but this time with unhindered relish, McAdams’s Esti groaning as Weisz’s Ronit undoes the crotch of her bodysuit with her teeth, Esti searching every contour of Ronit’s mouth with her tongue, then the ecstasy as they each reach inside the other’s underpants. They are simultaneously ravenous and exquisitely thorough. Though the moment almost everyone will be talking about will be when Weisz straddles McAdams and gently spits into her mouth, as McAdams eagerly receives it and asks for more, and more again.

Yeah, I know. It was all going so well until the whole “spits into her mouth” thing. Seriously, spits into her mouth? What? No. More and more again? No, again no. Is this some hot new lesbian trend I just don’t understand? Because imma NOPE out of that right quick.

I hope, sincerely, that it’s something less gross than actual just spitting into each other’s mouth. That this is some kind of failure to properly describe an erotic act on the author’s part. The writer also calls the scene as “sexy and gorgeous,” which I have never associated with the word “spit” in my entire life. So, yeah. The scene is then also described as “a tad male-gaze-y” which, come on guys. Can’t lesbians have one thing? And can that one thing please not involve spitting?

But, then it redeems itself somewhat by saying:

“Most of all, though, it’s moving, and very different from the coming-of-age lesbian scenes of ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ and ‘The Handmaiden.’ Here are two grown women who’ve done this before and are well past the discovery phase. Their only desire is to give pleasure to and receive it from one another, and they’ve been stymied for so long by circumstances…”

Yeah, that’s more like it. That I like. That gets me cranking up the old Lesbian Bat Signal again. Just, you know, keep the spit to yourselves, please.