Welcome back to another episode, Movie Nerds! This week we’re discussing two great pride pieces, The Children’s Hour (1961), and Black Mirror: San Junipero (2016). These are two great works of film depicting relationships between two women under different scopes.
The Children’s Hour is a film directed by William Wiley starring Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, and James Garner. In it, the main characters Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (MacLaine) are headmistresses of an all-girls boarding school and are accused of practicing lesbianism. The accusatory rumor creates an irreversible fall out based on speculation, lies, and bigotry. The performances from these actors are harrowing.
San Junipero is an episode in the anthology Netflix show, Black Mirror (2011). In this episode, we follow two women played by McKenzie Davis and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who find themselves in an alternate reality where they have their consciousness uploaded to re-experience their youth as they are terminally ill patients at a nursing home in the near future. Through this alternate reality, they meet, fall in love, and make decisions on how they are both to spend their afterlives.
Links:
The Children’s Hour:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054743/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_the%2520children%27s%2520hour
https://collider.com/the-childrens-hour-1961-audrey-hepburn-queerness-explained/
San Junipero:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4538072/?ref_=ttep_ep4
https://www.screenspy.com/black-mirror-san-junipero-explained/