Thursday, April 26, 2018

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.

7 comments:

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  2. Carmen SanDiego10:51 AM

    I really really don’t want to see the spit but I’m gonna go see this movie alone so I won’t have anyone to tell me when it’s over. Ugh

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  3. Anonymous10:54 AM

    Have heard the spit scene works. That it comes off as something they did as girls. I read the book and there is a spit scene -- much different, but I can see how it became something very erotic in the film.

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  4. Hi! I watched this film in the Bafici, (Buenos Aires independent film festival), and it was very good. Actually, very different from the book (which I really loved). The sex scenes was wonderful. Lelio has a lot of experience in diversity (Navidad and Una Mujer fantástica are pretty good examples of this). Spit or not spit (everyone is different in their tastes), the scene work.

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  5. Anonymous7:28 PM

    I was afraid of the spit when I heard about it, but after seeing the movie its fine. It's a very small part of the scene, I'm not really sure why such a fuss is being made about it really.

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  6. I too hope that I never, ever hear of Maureen Dowd writing about lesbian sex again - or about politics either. I had been unaware of Maureen Dowd's ignorant/ignominious portrayal of Trump as "Donald the Quasi-Dove" Oh. My. God. What a moron.
    I love the 'Disobedience' trailer video clips you embedded, BUT: There are a lot of good lesbian filmmakers and directors, so it seems to me that it is inexcusable for film studios to have movies about lesbians being made by straight clueless males.

    http://www.full-brief-panties.blogspot.com/

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