"Claire of the Moon"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
                  On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM
                        October 3, 1992

   This week the Tampa Bay area will have lots of interesting film
choices as the Third Annual Pride Film Festival opens Thursday
night and runs through Sunday at our own gorgeous 1920's movie
palace, the Tampa Theater.  As usual the Festival will present a
mixture of feature films, documentaries, and shorts covering many
different aspects of gay and lesbian culture in many different
styles.  There will be four feature films of particular interest to
lesbians, three of which you may have seen before: "Desert Hearts,"
"The Hunger," and "Strangers in Good Company."  The new film in its
Florida premier is entitled "Claire of the Moon."

    While all of these choices will, I think, be audience pleasers
in one way or another, I wish the Festival planners had been more
adventuresome in their choice of lesbian films; there are
interesting films by lesbian filmmakers that have been shown in
Gay and Lesbian film festivals in other parts of the country that
we never get to see in Tampa, for example Beeban Kidron's film
version of Jeanette Winterson's "Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit," or
Ulrike Oettinger's "Joan of Arc of Mongolia" (or any of her other
films) to give just a few examples.  I think our community is
sophisticated enough to enjoy being challenged by more avant garde
lesbian filmmakers; too bad this year's Festival doesn't provide
that opportunity.

   Of this year's offerings, it will surely be fun to see the
lesbian-vampire goings on between Catherine Deneuve and Susan
Sarandon in "The Hunger" in a lesbian-packed theater at midnight.
Many will enjoy the reprise of "Desert Hearts," a flawed but still
enjoyable film adaptation of Jane Rule's wonderful novel "Desert of
the Heart."  I've previously reviewed "Strangers in Good Company"
so I won't say much about it now except that I think it is the
class work in this grouping.  It's a wonderful film that's lesbian
in two senses: it has one openly lesbian character and in the
spirit of Adrienne Rich's lesbian-continuum it is woman-identified
and woman-loving and therefore lesbian.

    Would that "Claire of the Moon" were lesbian in that sense.
It's entire focus is on the impending lovemaking of its two
protagonists--and never have two film characters had a harder time
getting into bed with one another--but it surely isn't a film that
loves women.  When I talk to students about selecting a novel to
read for my lesbian studies class I tell them to make sure that
they don't just pick a pulp novel potboiler, the kind some writers
turn out by the dozens for the sole purpose of erotic titillation.
"Claire of the Moon" is the film equivalent of the pulp lesbian
erotic novel.  The filmmaking is pretty terrible but it does
succeed in building up great erotic tension among the characters
(and either tension or tedium among the viewers) as it finds one
obstacle after another to keep Claire and Noel apart until the last
passionate sequences.

   Much of the problem with this film is surely the result of its
miniscule budget.  It was made by writer/director Nicole Conn and
her company in Orgeon for something like  $30,000.  It has, among
other things, a ludicrous screenplay with failed pretensions of
being a "serious" exploration of a woman's sexual development,
inexperienced actors, and lots of the weaknesses that films have
when you've had to cut too many corners.  While the leading actors
(Karen Trumbo as Noel and Trisha Todd as Claire) are adequate,
much of the supporting cast is downright dreadful (one result of
there having been no money to reshoot a scene that didn't work or
reedit a sequence).  The story is set in a retreat for women
writers and the conflict is between Claire, a rather promiscious
straight woman and her cabin-mate Noel a Ph.D. psychologist dyke
who does sex research.  They hate each other on sight and, as you
know from the first moment, the film chronicles every step along
the way until they finally end up as lovers.

   The other women in the film, particularly the straight women but
the other dykes as well, come across as such unpleasant and
offensive people it makes you wonder whether there isn't more
woman-hating than woman-loving going on here.  I'd say, see "Claire
of the Moon" for the sex scene at the end but see "Strangers in
Good Company" if you want to see a film which loves women.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women
and Film.