in Criterion Month

Desert Hearts (1985)

When we picked our movies on the Criterion Draft podcast, I clearly didn’t know exactly what this movie was, since I referred to it both as a “road movie” and taking place in “Reagan’s America”. Neither of these things are true, since pretty much all of the film takes place in and around one city (Reno, Nevada), and I must have forgotten that this movie takes place in 1959 when we recorded that podcast. Still, Desert Hearts nonetheless had more or less the vibe I was hoping it would have, since it does feature a lot of scenes in cars of characters getting to know each other better (like in a road movie) and also features two women having to hide their romantic feelings for each other, much like they would have to in most places in Reagan’s America that weren’t New York or San Francisco.

Desert Hearts begins with a somewhat familiar but always compelling image: a woman getting off a train in an unfamiliar place to start anew after leaving a marriage. This woman is Vivian Bell (played by Helen Shaver) and she’s a 35-year-old Columbia professor who has traveled to have the divorce finalized in Reno because it’s a quicker, easier process in Nevada. She stays in the guest house of a ranch owned by Frances (Audra Lindley), who also has a few other women staying with her while their divorces are finalized. Soon after moving in, Vivian meets Cay Rivers (Patricia Charbonneau), a free spirit who Frances raised after her mother died, and who stands in stark contrast to the more buttoned-up, cosmopolitan Vivian.

While Vivian is working with a lawyer to get her divorce shored up, we see that Cay works at a casino where she gets consistently hit on by men despite being in a hush-hush relationship with one of the other women who works at the casino. However, the person who Cay really has her eyes on is Vivian, as the two have a certain attraction to each other that neither can explain, and which the movie wisely doesn’t try to. For much of the movie, Vivian is too scared to let these feelings manifest themselves, until after a wedding, Cay and Vivian go out to a lake outside of town and kiss in the rain. As much as Vivian enjoys it, she’s still not sure what to do about it.

Cay and Vivian then return to Frances’s ranch that next morning and Frances, blinded by her own ideas of societal norms, disapproves of what she thinks happened when they were out late that night, so she makes Vivian pack her bags and leave. Vivian then must spend the rest of her time in Reno at a hotel, where Cay shows up one day. The two mostly argue about whether they should ever see each other again, and then while Vivian is in the bathroom, she turns around and Cay is naked in bed. They then have one of the better sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie together, though after that they’re not entirely sure what to do with each other as Vivian faces the impending train ride back to New York.

Looking a bit at the contemporary reviews of Desert Hearts is… interesting. It seems that most critics gave it fairly mixed reviews (most notably Vincent Canby of The New York Times), saying the story and characters were too simplistic, with Gene Siskel being one of the few high-profile critics to actually “get it”. Of course, this reception is more a reflection of how America wasn’t quite ready for a film that presents a lesbian romance in such unsensational, plain-spoken terms. It’s also perhaps a reflection of there being too many straight male critics working in media at the time (and honestly probably now too) to assess the film’s contents.

This, of course, does not give me much more authority to talk about this film than the critics who did in 1985, but I’d still like to talk a little bit about how much I admire it. It’s a little hard to remove this movie from the fact that queer love stories have been more and more normalized in the years since Desert Hearts, so the movie runs the risk of feeling less special. But I never got that feeling from this movie, since the performances are so sincere, the direction is so gentle and warm, and the way these women have to delicately navigate their big feelings in the backdrop of a desert cowboy town feels (apart from a tiny stretch in the middle of the film that drags) pitch perfect.

It’s quite simply the kind of love story that makes onscreen romance look so simple and effortless, which also carries over to its pivotal sex scene. It’s the rare movie that has a sex scene that is as romantic as a kiss on the top of the Empire State Building, but also is not meant to be merely erotic. There’s a real tenderness to the way director Donna Deitch shoots these characters and captures the stillness of a silent hotel room where the lack of music makes it feel much more intimate. But it’s not just the scene itself that makes everything so darn charged with passion. It’s also the fact that these characters have been denying their sexual attraction the whole movie because of how they’d be perceived, and that during this time, behind closed doors was the only place that these people could really embrace the part of themselves that they’re forced to hide.

Sadly, as I mentioned earlier, Desert Hearts was a little too ahead of its time to get the attention it deserved or open doors for those involved. Donna Deitch almost exclusively directed TV after making this debut film, while Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau were relegated to supporting parts in bigger movies and TV shows for the rest of their careers. There’s an interview on the Criterion release of this movie where Jane Lynch interviews Deitch, and says there was a period in her 20s where she watched the movie over and over again, because she saw so much of herself in these characters. It’s stories like that that remind you why representation in film matters, but it’s also nice to see that a story like the one in the movie doesn’t feel nearly as radical in our current landscape, yet is done so honestly that all of the emotions behind it still ring true.