Go Fish
Today, I'm stepping out of my usual wheelhouse a bit to talk about lesbian movies - a genre of which I have seen some staples but still surprisingly few - because I need to shout about Go Fish, which is extremely niche and in my opinion truly deserves more recognition in queer circles.
Go Fish is a black and white 1994 movie written by Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche and directed by Rose Troche that I had the opportunity of seeing twice this year, and that immediately found a special place in my heart. It may be the one movie I know that is written this clearly by lesbians for a lesbian audience, in the way it shows snapshots of the daily life of a small circle of friends who are all lesbians.
Though it does have a main romance, I would argue that, contrary to a lot of lesbian movies, it is not a romance, but an earnest showcase of the big and small troubles of a lesbian community of the 90s, in a way that feels mundane and almost effortless when considering the breadth of topics it tackles.
"Community" is the key word here. The movie itself was made by a group of friends in Chicago and people recruited around town, volunteering because they were interested in genuinely seeing themselves in a queer movie. The cast, mostly broke and with full-time jobs, shot on evenings and the weekends, gathering their money to fund this project because they could and wanted to. Apparently, Rose Troche called all the queer producers she could find at the time to get it produced.
Go Fish itself focuses on the life of five women split into two groups of roommates (all of them lesbians, some of them of color) who desperately try to play matchmaker for two of them, Max and Ely. Indeed, the other three think they could get along, notably since the former really wants a girlfriend and the latter is stuck in a withering long-distance relationship. Though Max and Ely are the main focus - with regular, fun interruptions of the rest of the cast as some sort of Greek chorus commenting on how this relationship is progressing and discussing what they could do to help - the movie showcases a wide variety of lesbian-specific elements through all of its characters.
This includes wanting to change one's hair or outfit without wanting to be seen as playing into some kind of lesbian passing, displaying early lesbian signs as a kid like wanting to live with your best girl friend, having a girlfriend in high school but not being out to anyone, speculating on people famous or not who could be lesbians, facing a forced outing and expulsion from your parents and being supported by your community through misdirected anger, or even small elements about preferring a chosen name.
All these are present in little scenes that never feel overbearing, just actual facets of various lesbian identities.
Two of the most striking and heaviest scenes of the movie, both artistically and in their message, deserve a special mention.
The first one is a group judgement, a metaphorical lynching, by members of the community gatekeeping the term "lesbian" from Daria, one of the main characters, who occasionally also has sex with men. Both the scene itself of all of them against her, and the arguments the characters use, don't look a day older thirty years later with Internet discourse, and it's incredible just as much as it is frightening to see it here. Daria herself is a wonderful character, supported by the smaller community of the main characters in her open, noncommitted approach to relationships; and truly, at times, this support of close ones amidst a wider hostile community means a lot.
The second striking scene represents the ever-present easy way out that would be a somewhat comfortable straight marriage. An estrangement from the rest of the lesbian community, it requires a constant resistance to oppose that permanent weight of the norm, and as the movie says it gravely: "I'm not waiting for a man, and I don't like the idea that a man is waiting for me".
There is a nuance here in the way the movie highlights how community support is vital to survive, and yet how easy it can be to get cut off from it one way or another, that is raw and real and difficult to put into words.
That theme of ambivalent feelings toward a wider community is also meta-commented upon in the movie, as two characters go see a movie made by a queer man and disagree about it: one of them criticizes it, as she feels it shows the queers as miserable and it fails to picture the whole community; while the other argues the director represents what he sees of it and shouldn't be held accountable for featuring each and every queer identity.
Once again, this feels extremely actual today still: queer media are held to high standards of representation that sometimes don't try to meet halfway with what they're trying to tell; and yet this need of feeling seen in media is absolutely vital. This meta-jab at Go Fish itself doesn't make it immune to critics (I wish, for instance, that the age gap between the protagonists was actually addressed), but it helps, too, seeing it where it stands: as a joyful representation of a close-knit community of lesbians, without ever feeling like any of this is done for some oh-so-loaded "representation".
It is truly, simply, a crystallization of the then-daily life of people like the ones who made the movie and who wanted to be seen in it.
Similarly, the movie does feature lesbian sex scenes, and they are all framed simply as something that exists. Sex in Go Fish is shown in fun and erotic ways and is poked fun at both intra-diegetically (by the characters) and extra-diegetically (by the framing), because why wouldn't it be? And though it does end the film too, its usual status as the peak of a rather scripted representation of lesbian romance is joyously overplayed in several clever ways. In the end, it simply is something the people who made the movie wanted to feature, too.
At its core, Go Fish highlights the importance of friendship and queer roommates and close communities to survive and to thrive, against the norm, and sometimes even in spite of a broader queer community. It doesn't embody everything lesbian, of course, but it captures something of the joys and heartaches of sharing a sense of belonging and identity with other people.
It is also worth saying that though the movie has its share of small experimental intermissions or lesbian in-jokes, it is very funny and still accessible to a wider audience, and I cannot recommend it enough: I'll say it again, but so much of it still resonates 30 years later that I am frankly amazed and terrified in turns when I think back on it.
The main drawback of all this is probably the difficulty to actually find a way to watch this movie: from my experience, it is extremely niche, and it seems rather hard to buy or find it online in any way. If there are French readers here, I also have to recommend being wary of the official French subtitles, that very often undertranslate what is told in English, sometimes in infuriating ways.
On my end, I had the opportunity to borrow the DVD from some queer archives this summer... then to see it again at a screening last weekend among a mostly lesbian audience, with Rose Troche and VS Brodie (who plays Ely) as guests, and that really was a wonderful experience - it was something to see the room this invested and reactive to community in-jokes. An interview with the aforementioned guests afterward also added a layer to all this, as it made me realize the movie had been made in the midst of the AIDS pandemic. Rose Troche insisted on how they wanted to make an uplifting movie providing optimism and togetherness to a grieving and dying community; and honestly, it is so impressive to feel this optimism and this togetherness 30 years later still.
I came out of the movie exhilarated - and, if I may say so, even more lesbian.
Still, I do think it deserves a watch whether you are or not.