Reading Into The Rachels

I have not seen “Disobedience” yet. But the studio’s marketing department has sent me like 30 emails about clips from the films. (Full disclosure: They also sent me a T-shirt.) So, um, I feel a little like I’ve seen it already. Like, I’m serious. Here are all of the clips.






And while I’m still quite excited to see this film (wariness about all the spitting business aside) one thing that has decidedly made me less excited is the big New York Times feature on Rachel Weisz from over the weekend. It’s everything we hate about straight, clueless writers trying to report on “hot lesbian sex.” No, really, there’s a line in the story that read:

“Baby news aside, the real reason I am below 14th Street is to discuss hot lesbian sex.”

Granted, I expect nothing less of Maureen Dowd whose many less than delightful columns during the 2016 election cycle included the all-time atrocious gem “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk” piece. I also worry that the film’s big lesbian sex scene has been entirely orchestrated by its straight male director without, it seems, any kind of input from actual lesbians. We’ve had more than enough prestige lesbian films directed entirely by straight dudes, thank you.

Here’s the exchange about the big hot lesbian sex scene from Dowd’s article:

Did Ms. Weisz do any research for the love scene with lesbian friends?

“Nooooo,” she said. “You can’t ever ask people how they have sex. (Sebastian Lelio, the director) storyboarded it, so it was all his idea to have just faces and spittle and wetness and the other woman’s face. He wasn’t interested in nudity. He was interested in one woman’s face in pleasure in the frame and the other woman outside the frame so you have to imagine where her fingers and tongue are and what’s going on.”

Again, the spittle stuff is deeply off-putting to read about. Still, I want to give the film a truly fair try. I also never, ever want to hear Maureen Dowd write about lesbian sex ever, ever again.