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thexfridax · 1 year

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Tell me about it, stud: the rapturous return of the butch lesbian scene

With sold-out club nights from Bristol to Birmingham, a long-marginalised subculture is enjoying a brilliant post-pandemic resurgence

by Ella Braidwood, Wed 8 Mar 2023 10.00 GMT, last modified on Wed 8 Mar 2023 16.44 GMT

I am at a dinner table in south London, in the middle of which sit ceremonially placed items evoking butch culture: a carabiner, a sex harness and an edition of Quim – a lesbian erotic magazine from the late 80s and 90s. It is a Saturday evening in mid-February, and also eating bowls of dal around me are nine regulars from Bristol Butch Bar, set up last spring as a hub for the city’s butch community: among them lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people and non-binary people. I’ve joined them on a “field trip” to the club night Butch, Please! Between us, we have shaved heads, corduroy, jeans, vests, chain necklaces, black trousers, statement shirts and leather.

The butch identity seems to be having a moment. Tonight’s event, as normal, is sold out. “I see about 1,000 people come through a month now – there’s just huge demand for this space,” says Tabs Benjamin, who set up Butch, Please! at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in 2016. Nights are themed, often with a nod to queer history. This evening there’s a handkerchief code: a discreet way of signalling sexual orientation used by gay men in the 70s who would stuff coloured handkerchiefs in their back pockets.

“There is an absolute resurgence in butch identity, in the sense of belonging and in history as well,” says Joelle Taylor, who in 2021 won the TS Eliot Prize for a poetry collection about butch lesbian subculture. “It’s an exciting time for us,” she adds. “We’re starting to write the histories, memoirs, things that we actually remember.” This year, at least three new books explore butch identity: Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H; Mrs S by K Patrick; and My Own Worst Enemy by Lily Lindon.

The Bristol butches have an array of handkerchiefs, so I take a navy blue one to signal whether I’m more of a “top” (giver) or a “bottom” (receiver) during sex, depending on if it’s in my left or right pocket. As a butch lesbian who is also “soft butch”, I’d say qualities of my identity include being playful, sensitive and, well, silly. A good example: in the pub, someone deciphers my handkerchief code, only for me to realise I’ve put it in the wrong pocket.

The butch identity is not mainstream, even within the LGBTQ+ community, but things are happening. In March, the Saturday edition of Butch, Please! was started in addition to the existing Thursday night, both once a month. Bristol Butch Bar now gets about 60 people at its monthly meet-ups, where there is an armwrestling league and crafts. “It started off just people we knew, and then it spread to people they knew,” says co-founder Rosie Poebright. Another London club night, Pillow Kings, was set up last autumn, as was Soft Butch in Bristol, both running sold-out events.

In Birmingham, Wile Out, an LGBTQ+ night for people of colour, is popular among studs – an identity embraced by some masculine Black lesbians – alongside events by Urban Slag, On Your Gaydar and, in London, Lick. “I went out expecting a normal night full of drag queens and cheesy pop music, and then I stumbled into the Village, where Wile Out was at that time, and I loved it,” recalls Shan Haywood, a stud. “It’s just nice to have a community of people like myself. I don’t have to walk into the room and be the only Black person there, which is the case in a lot of gay clubs.” Haywood features in a new exhibition in London this month, We/Us, by the butch photographer Roman Manfredi, showcasing portraits and oral histories of working-class butches and studs.

In 2023, the butch identity means different things to different people. For me, a 29-year-old in London, it is the merging of my sexuality with my female masculinity: a physical reflection of how I feel on the inside – that is, inherently masculine – via men’s clothing, short hair and the way I carry myself. It is not that I want to be a man; I love being a woman. But it took me years to say who I am and to look this way. “Butch women and trans women are arguably the people who challenge gender norms in a way that really, really upsets people,” says Benjamin, 37, a self-described “butch dyke”. When I grew up, in Cumbria, butch lesbians were the ‘worst’ of the lesbians, a word I have found hard enough to say in itself: ugly, disgusting and unlovable. We are, I think, still perceived that way by some today.

For Prinx Silver, a drag king and transmasculine person in his mid-30s, “butch is that queer identity that allowed me to reclaim my masculinity that I thought I wasn’t allowed to have. I see it more as a way of moving through the world, of being perceived, or like a feeling.” Cassie Agbehenu, a soft butch and Bristol Butch Bar regular, similarly describes it as a “reclamation of masculinity … it can be caring and nurturing and joyful and sexy”. Taylor, a butch lesbian, says: “I’m 55, I come from a feminist movement, and my whole life has been dedicated to trying to persuade people I’m a woman, because they don’t want me to be one. So that’s where the fight is for me.”

What is the butch aesthetic? Again, it depends. “Sometimes,” says Silver, “I’m a butch stereotype,” so he’ll wear boots and flannel or checked shirts. Other times, it’s a vest with jeans, or a leather jacket, like the butches of the 70s. Haywood, 26, describes her “stud starter kit” as an oversized T-shirt and a hat, though she also enjoys wearing a suit and tie. “I feel comfortable in men’s clothes, and I may wear my hair in a certain way, or carry myself in a certain way – it’s a masculine energy, essentially,” she adds. While short hair is liberating for some butches, it’s not a requirement.

As far as history goes, the butch identity has its roots in working-class lesbian communities, as far back as 1940s and 50s America, who reclaimed the word from its use as a slur, with some women dressing to safely “pass” as men with their more feminine partner. In Britain, masculine lesbians included the writer Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943). Despite being marginalised, butches have been on the frontline: some say that it was the butch lesbian Stormé DeLarverie who threw the first punch in the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, kickstarting the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. “We’ve always been here,” as Benjamin says.

By the 80s and 90s, the butch identity had reached its golden era. In the US, the butch lesbian singer kd lang posed for a cover of Vanity Fair with Cindy Crawford; the Calvin Klein model Jenny Shimizu dated Angelina Jolie; and Leslie Feinberg published Stone Butch Blues, named after another subcategory (“stone butch”). In the UK, the underground butch scene was thriving. Taylor describes a “dykedom”: lesbians moving to squat communities in London and other cities, and to the Greenham Common women’s peace camp in Berkshire. The Camden Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group set up in London, as did Gemma, a support group for disabled lesbians, in 1976. “There was a sense that we were all looking out for each other, that we were connected via squats, we were connected by relationships,” says Taylor. This London scene was immortalised by the 2021 film Rebel Dykes, starring Del LaGrace Volcano, whose The Drag King Book documented the 90s drag king scene.

Events, culture and spaces centring the butch identity appear to be having a ripple effect. It was the combination of a group trip to Butch, Please! last February and a screening of Rebel Dykes that helped inspire Bristol Butch Bar. Silver first went to Butch, Please! while still working out his identity, and now performs there. Social media has also created new ways to be together. “The pandemic did have a part to play in those spaces being taken away,” says Benjamin. “A lot of young people in particular were like: ‘Hang on, we need these spaces.’ So it’s created this surge of enthusiasm and support.”

For Poebright, 42, a genderqueer and transmasculine butch, there are also recent, tragic circumstances behind Bristol Butch Bar. Not long after it was set up, a friend in the community died. “The person we lost was a transmasc, non-binary person, and they were in our group when we first set it up,” Poebright says. “There was a bunch of people that met at the funeral, and it turned out we all had a lot in common, including butchness and butch appreciation. So there was a sort of foundation of realising that we can only just barely survive alone, and needing to make spaces to be together in order just to survive the conditions that we’re in.”

These spaces may, to an outsider, just seem like glitter, bondage gear and, in my case, handkerchief mishaps. And, of course, that’s part of it. Drama and infighting are par for the course; bumping into exes in confined spaces is only to be expected. But for lots of people, whose lives have been reduced to nothing more than a joke or a sexual fetish, these club nights are life-changing. As Haywood puts it: “It’s just what everybody wants, really, isn’t it? To have something they identify with when they’re out.”

#The Guardian #Butch identities #Butch please #UK #Welcome return #of the butch

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ropoto · 2 years

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Thank you for the tag @great-hair-and-a-tie <3

Last song I listened to: .... I don't remember lol

Favourite colour: black

Currently reading: Double booked - Lily Lindon

Last movie: to bad to mention...

Currently working on: assigment for classes

No pressure tag: @themoontaxi @fightingdragonswithwho @hotch-girl @jddryder :)

#tag game #:)

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maximumwobblerbanditdonut · 2 years

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Billie Eilish and Finneas, who won an Oscar in March for co-writing “No Time to Die” from the James Bond film of the same name, were invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Tuesday (June 28) They were among 12 people invited to join the music branch and among 397 people invited to join the Academy across all branches.

An invitation to join the Academy is generally a perk of winning an Oscar. Ariana DeBose, who won best supporting actress for West Side Story, and Troy Kotsur, who won best supporting actor for CODA, were invited to join the actors branch.

Other notables who were invited to join are Jamie Dornan, Kodi Smith-McPhee and Sheryl Lee Ralph (acting), and film critic Leonard Maltin and music supervisor Julia Michels (members at large).

Invitations to membership extended this year: short films and feature animation (41), documentary (38), sound (32), actors (30), producers (30), visual effects (28), executives (26), marketing and public relations (25), members at large (25), writers (22), directors (21), production design (16), makeup artists and hairstylists (13), film editors (12), music (12), costume designers (11), cinematographers (10) and casting directors (9).

Actors

Funke Akindele – “Omo Ghetto: The Saga,” “Jenifa”

Caitríona Balfe – “Belfast,” “Ford v Ferrari”

Reed Birney – “Mass,” “Changeling”

Jessie Buckley – “The Lost Daughter,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”

Lori Tan Chinn – “Turning Red,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”

Daniel K. Daniel – “The Fugitive,” “A Soldier’s Story”

Ariana DeBose – “West Side Story,” “The Prom”

Robin de Jesús – “tick, tick…BOOM!,” “The Boys in the Band”

Jamie Dornan – “Belfast,” “Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar”

Michael Greyeyes – “Wild Indian,” “Woman Walks Ahead”

Gaby Hoffmann – “C’mon C’mon,” “Wild”

Amir Jadidi – “A Hero,” “Cold Sweat”

Kajol – “My Name Is Khan,” “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham…”

Troy Kotsur – “CODA,” “The Number 23”

Vincent Lindon – “Titane,” “The Measure of a Man”

BarBara Luna – “The Concrete Jungle,” “Five Weeks in a Balloon”

Aïssa Maïga – “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” “Mood Indigo”

Selton Mello – “My Hindu Friend,” “Trash”

Olga Merediz – “In the Heights,” “Adrift”

Sandra Kwan Yue Ng – “Echoes of the Rainbow,” “Portland Street Blues”

Hidetoshi Nishijima – “Drive My Car,” “Cut”

Rena Owen – “The Last Witch Hunter,” “The Dead Lands”

Jesse Plemons – “The Power of the Dog,” “Judas and the Black Messiah”

Sheryl Lee Ralph – “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit,” “The Distinguished Gentleman”

Renate Reinsve – “The Worst Person in the World,” “Welcome to Norway”

Marco Rodriguez – “El Chicano,” “Unspeakable”

Joanna Scanlan – “After Love,” “Notes on a Scandal”

Kodi Smit-McPhee – “The Power of the Dog,” “Let Me In”

Suriya – “Jai Bhim,” “Soorarai Pottru”

Anya Taylor-Joy – “The Northman,” “Last Night in Soho”

Music

Billie Eilish Baird O’Connell – “No Time to Die”

Amie Doherty – “Spirit Untamed,” “The High Note”

Lili Haydn – “Strip Down, Rise Up,” “Broken Kingdom”

Leo Heiblum – “Maria Full of Grace,” “Frida”

Natalie Holt – “Fever Dream,” “Journey’s End”

Nathan Johnson – “Nightmare Alley,” “Knives Out”

Jacobo Lieberman – “Maria Full of Grace,” “Frida”

Ariel Rose Marx – “Shiva Baby,” “Rebel Hearts”

Hesham Nazih – “The Guest,” “Born a King”

Finneas O’Connell – “No Time to Die”

Dan Romer – “Luca,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Nerida Tyson-Chew – “H Is for Happiness,” “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid”

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jemandtherobots · 1 year

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books read in 2023, part 1 of 2

thought i might as well do a post like this for the first half of the year bcos a) i've read a lot so this post will be long and b) i already have to go back like "i have no memory of this place book" with half of these.

Andy Weir - The Martian

No memory of why I wanted to start the year with this but I guess it falls in the category of "cosy read" for me so.

Jean Kearns Miller (ed.) - Women From Another Planet? (finnish translation)

Found my way to the mental health shelf of the local library and picked up some autism books instead of whatever it was I was actually looking for; this was an interesting read of essays and conversations between autistic women.

Puhu hereille (finnish)

This is an anthology of poems and short prose written by people on the autism spectrum and I 100% recommend it, I'm a little sorry it's hidden away in non-fiction and not shelved as poetry or whatever, but I'm very happy I found it.

Henry Fry - First Time for Everything

On one hand it's giving girlboss but make it a gay man, on the other hand this is such a good exploration of internalised homophobia and queer community dynamics and all that good stuff so I can forgive the girlboss vibes.

Catherynne M Valente - Space Opera

I nearly gave up on this so many times. Look, I love Eurovision, I love space, I very thoroughly enjoyed reading Douglas Adams as a teenager, so this should have been perfect for me. Unfortunately it was an unreadable mess and I hated every second I spent reading it.

Stephanie Julian - Hard Lines & Goal Lines

It must be hard writing romance because you need some sort of reason the characters can't be together and happy right from the start, like you need a plot, but whatever's getting in their way needs to also be something they can overcome by the end of the book. So sometimes that obstacle ends up being basically nothing, as it is in this book.

Emma Puikkonen - Lupaus (finnish)

Really enjoyed reading this one, but it was also a confusing reading experience for me as someone with eco-anxiety and no parental instinct, because I still found myself relating more to the parenting stuff than the eco-anxiety stuff. Anyway would absolutely recommend.

Sanni Purhonen - Jos vain muuttuisin toiseksi (finnish)

This is a poetry collection about disability which I actually passed on before because the blurb on the back cover does this zero justice. Publishers: get your shit together 2k23. Everyone who speaks finnish: read this.

Erik J Brown - All That's Left in the World

Okay I fuckin love disaster fiction. This ticked all my boxes: disaster survival, gay, included a map.

Marian Keyes - Again, Rachel

I am a Marian Keyes girlie and I also read Rachel's Holiday years and years ago (fun fact: my copy of Rachel's Holiday has a cover with a woman holding a drink on it and quotes about what a fun light read it is which, uh, well), and so I obviously needed to know if my blorbo was okay. The worst part of this book was a few days after I finished it, someone close to me went into a treatment centre for addiction and when I visited them it took so much willpower not to be like "oh I recently read a book about that".

Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary

Thought I might read another Andy Weir to see if the rest of his stuff was as good; it was alright, but I am not the target audience Andy Weir is writing to and that's fine. In my notes, I wrote that this book felt like "Arrival for men" and I stand by it.

Lily Lindon - Double Booked

The first I ever heard about this was someone saying "despite the concept it is not biphobic" like yeah okay fair, but also this book feels like the dictionary definition of gay and somehow homophobic? I think a "woman discovers she's queer, gets sucked into a specific community of toxic queer stereotypes and finally learns to accept herself and her bisexuality" story would be really great if any of the characters were the slightest bit sympathetic. Unfortunately the stereotypes are never really interrogated in any way, there's never a "oh actually there's more to being queer than this one specific club/scene" moment, and everyone's just kind of a dick lol. The main character never really puts in the work, so her ending feels unearned.

Kait Nolan - Our Kind of Love

Gonna be honest, typing this into the list I fully could not remember what this book was but then I remembered, it was the one with a content warning at the start for cursing and pre-marital sex, which is a fair enough warning but not one I recall seeing before. It's a sweet book, I liked it, but some of the characters were pretty one-dimensional.

Becky Chambers - A Psalm for the Wild-Built

This was lovely but also felt really unsatisfying somehow? Anyway I will read anything Becky Chambers writes, so.

Pauliina Haasjoki - Himmeä sininen piste (finnish)

Essays on climate change, the environment, etc. I came away from this book with a lot of thoughts and with a long list of books and movies to get my hands on.

Ali Hazelwood - Love on the Brain

Okay I fucking loved this one actually, this was even better than The Love Hypothesis. Sorry not sorry. Two notes though: 1) apparently the two main characters had a height difference of 40 cm and as someone who once dated a guy maybe 30 cm taller than me, I have to say the logistics of the kissing are not as simple as this book makes it seem, and 2) I don't like Ali Hazelwood's sex scenes at all rip.

Xiran Jay Zhao - Iron Widow

!!!!!!!!!

Alexandria Bellefleur - Written in the Stars

When will I escape the fucking Harry Potter references, if this wasn't a library book I would have set fire to it. That said, the rest of it was really nice, we love a little F/F fake dating opposites attract romance moment, although I can't speak to the quality of the sex scenes bcos I was reading this on the train sitting next to my mum so I kind of skipped those.

Miira Luhtavaara - Pinnallisuus (finnish)

Idk this had some fun visual stuff but mostly this was just like. Words. Apparently this is an award-winning poet but maybe I'm not cultured enough bcos I cannot understand why.

Jennette McCurdy - I'm Glad My Mom Died

The internet's been buzzing about this so much I had to read it despite barely knowing who Jennette McCurdy is; this was really good but also I felt so voyeuristic reading it like "noo I don't need to know this stuff about a complete stranger, why am I reading this" as if she didn't write it herself in a book for people to read.

Christina Sweeney-Baird - The End of Men

Based on the reviews etc that I read, I think that a lot of people (including the author) approached this book from a non-speculative-fiction background. I came to this book having read a) a bunch of disaster, incl. pandemic fiction and b) The Female Man by Joanna Russ and Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. So I understand that this was groundbreaking to some people, but to me it was a bit of a let-down. Obviously not every book has to add something new to its genre, but with feminist sci-fi I think I'd expect some awareness of genre, at least.

Also. If you don't know anything about genetics and infectious diseases, it's okay to not go into detail about them. I don't mind the idea of a vague nebulous disease that only kills men (as a plot device in fiction, I mean, I'm not buzzed about the idea in real life), I can suspend my disbelief. I stop being able to suspend disbelief when an author writes something this incredibly wrong.

Louisa M Alcott - Little Women

I watched the 90's adaptation recently bcos my man (John Neville) is in it so I figured I ought to read the book someday - I mean, I read some of it as a kid but I don't think I ever finished it - and honestly, I think child me was right bcos this book really isn't all that great.

Trish Milburn - A Cowboy's Kiss

I go on bookbub to look at my deals, I see the word "cowboy" and black out and the next thing I know that shit is in my google play library. ANYWAY. A librarian named Anna gets in an accident, and has to be looked after by a sexy doctor who is also a cowboy?? Sign me the fuck up.

Fiona MacArthur - Lacey

This was a pretty dull book and also loses so many points for the love interest being a cop, but you don't look a free ebook in the mouth.

Rachael Bloome - The Truth in Tiramisu

Another pretty meh romance.

Kerttu Kotakorpi - Suomen luonto 2100 (finnish)

A little prediction into what Finland might be like in the year 2100 as far as climate and weather go - an interesting read, for sure, if a bit depressing (:

Sari Elfving - Saattaja

Well. I liked the concept (1939, biology student doesn't get to go along on a research trip to find a butterfly she's interested in, war breaks out and she fakes nurse credentials to go serve in the war so she can see the butterfly), and I thought it was well-written, but I also just mostly did not like this book.

Martha Wells - All Systems Red (finnish translation)

I hate reading translations but sometimes needs must - this was sooo good oh my god. I need to read this entire series right now immediately thank you.

Lempi Nyyssönen - Taskukellon aikaa (finnish)

Was at grandma's, picked up one of the few poetry books she has, turns out this was written by her former neighbour. Not the most interesting poetry I've ever read tbh but also not the worst.

CJ Carmichael - Melt My Heart, Cowboy

A pretty good book about the friendship between Rosie, a writer/chocolate shop worker dealing with a big life change, and Sara Maria, a young autistic woman recovering from a breakdown and trying to find her own place in life without being defined by her family. Oh except it's actually a romance between Rosie and Brant, Sara Maria's brother and the cowboy of the title. It's just that he's the least interesting character in the book, and a bit of a dick, and even Rosie is like "why do I like this guy, he's a dick to his sister and he kind of sucks" sooo.

This book gets bonus points for Rosie finding out Sara Maria is autistic and her reaction being, and I quote, "like the Sheldon character on Big Bang Theory?"

Sangu Mandanna - The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

This was mostly Really Good except remember that thing I wrote before about having to write obstacles to romance that are exactly the right size? The obstacle in this one should have been too big, actually, holy shit.

Carina Taylor - Tuesdays Like That

This book has really fantastic dialogue. The rest of it isn't that great.

Holly Smale - The Cassandra Complex

I'm putting spoilers here bcos I would have wanted them myself: I was so distracted reading this bcos first a side character made some comment about Cassandra, the main character, being on the spectrum, I was like "oh is she autistic?" (yes) and when I figured she probably was my next question was "does she know she's autistic?" (no.)

I did enjoy the book though, would recommend.

Note: I have left three books off this list bcos some things are between me and God (or, as it happens, between me and Google Play Books which now knows too much about me). Anyway see you in six months for part two! :)

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ao3feed-tolkien · 1 year

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Stuck on Me (Like A Tattoo)

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/0xeav2S

by Coraleeveritas

When Halbrand had offered his floristry services in lieu of a more traditional gift after one of his oldest friends decided to throw a last minute baby shower, he hadn’t expected to cross paths with a tiny whirlwind of a woman the very next day, and he certainly couldn’t have predicted that Galadriel would be holding an event at her gallery the same weekend he was going to be in Lindon.

A sequel to Tattoo You.

Words: 5307, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (TV 2022)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Characters: Galadriel | Artanis, Halbrand (The Rings of Power), Elrond Peredhel, Isildur (Tolkien)

Relationships: Galadriel | Artanis/Halbrand (The Rings of Power), Morgoth Bauglier | Melkor / Halbrand (Past), Galadriel | Artanis / Celeborn (Past)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Human!Halbrand Defence Squad, implied/referenced past domestic abuse, First Kiss, Flirting, Bickering, Bisexual Disaster Halbrand, Roses and Lilies and Orchids oh my, Misunderstandings, Galadriel’s Brothers Are Amused, Galadriel Is Not, My Continued Dislike Of Modern Celeborn Continues, Palantíri is Instagram, Halbrand Is A Walking Thirst Trap, Seven Minutes in Heaven (kind of literally), Fluff, SO MUCH FLUFF, Halbrand Could Probably Do With Some Therapy But We Won’t Get Into That Here

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/0xeav2S

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #Tolkien #JRR Tolkien #Tolkien works #ao3 #fan fiction

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magicmusicdreams · 1 year

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What's your favourite bisexual representation in a book?

Thing is.. I've read books with gay and lesbian characters aplenty, but the only bi rep I've read so far has been in Heartstopper haha. I've heard that Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse has excellent bi rep though, and I have that waiting on my shelves, so I might need to get to that soon. I will also try and read Double Booked by Lily Lindon this year, which has a bi main character. OH and The Rook and Rose trilogy by MA Carrick has some bi characters, but those are minor side characters and cannot really be called favourites. Thanks for the fun question!

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lgbtqreads · 2 years

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New Releases: June 7, 2022

Middle Grade Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino Sam is very in touch with their own queer identity. They’re nonbinary, and their best friend, TJ, is nonbinary as well. Sam’s family is very cool with it… as long as Sam remembers that nonbinary kids are also required to clean their rooms, do their homework, and try not to antagonize their teachers too much. The teacher-respect thing is hard when…

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aimeesramblings · 2 years

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Book Review: Double Booked

Title: Double Booked Author: Lily Lindon Publisher: Head of Zeus Published: 9th June 2022 Pages: 416 From Goodreads: Gina is about to marry her boyfriend.George is about to join a cult lesbian pop band.Gina and George are the same person.No wonder Georgina is DOUBLE BOOKEDA fresh, timely and genuinely laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about a sensible young woman in a long-term relationship…

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#book blog #book blogger #book review #double booked #lily lindon #review

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daisyachain · 6 years

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it may be entirely unrelated but a sign of a good series seems to be that you can pair up any two characters (romantically/platonically/familially - that’s not a word is it) in a fic easily because

a) they tend to have multiple different canon interactions instead of sticking to like 2 dynamics or forgetting to have character talk at all

b) they tend to develop characters enough so that they become walking, talking, independently motivated entities whose behaviours can be easily predicted or modelled as opposed to flat things that are restricted to whatever behaviour fits the plot/subplot

c) they tend to have complex enough universes that the history between any two characters in the grand scheme of things either exists or can be extrapolated

#e.g. pandora hearts does split its characters into groups of 2 or 3 but these groups often shift and overlap #so a lot of characters have pre-existing dynamics #e.g. lottie (minor villain) has an established dynamic with oswald jack fang noise lily break vincent and sharon #kelsey rambles #and then most of my faves (discworld tolkien mtmte ph pofi etc) fit b)#because even though there's like no interaction that i know of between...i don't know...angua and magrat #they're each so well fleshed-out that you can imagine it just like that #and for an example of c) we have tolkien (and the others)#because each different ethnic group has an established location at each point in history you can choose any two characters (provided they #like actually were in the same place at the same time once) and go with it #this is less about shipping and more about just anything #for instance: why does tauriel have red hair? it's because she's descended from the laiquendi and ambarussa's people #because they both lived in ossiriand and the laiquendi might later have fled to their silvan relatives in the greenwood #after beleriand fell and the western noldor took over lindon

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absencesrepetees · 2 years

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most anticipated in 2022

crimes of the future (david cronenberg, w/ viggo mortensen, kristen stewart, lea seydoux)

the stars at noon (claire denis, w/ margaret qualley, joe alwyn) + both sides of the blade (w/ juliette binoche, mati diop, vincent lindon, grégoire colin)

irma vep (series) (olivier assayas, w/ alicia vikander, carrie brownstein, alex descas, adria arjona, jeanne balibar)

infinity pool (brandon cronenberg, w/ alexander skarsgard, mia goth)

decision to leave (park chan-wook, w/ tang wei)

the zone of interest (jonathan glazer)

eureka (lisandro alonso, w/ viggo mortensen)

master gardener (paul schrader, w/ joel edgerton, sigourney weaver)

coma (bertrand bonello)

human flowers of flesh (helena whitmann w/ angeliki papoulia, denis lavant)

scarlet (pietro marcello, w/ louis garrell)

the curse (series) (josh & benny safdie/nathan fielder, w/ emma stone)

kimi (steven soderbergh, w/ zoe kravitz) + full circle (series)

new hong sang-soo films (?)

showing up (kelly reichardt, w/ michelle williams, andre benjamin, john magaro)

men (alex garland, w/ jessie buckley)

hellraiser (david bruckner, w/ jamie clayton)

passages (ira sachs, w/ franz rogowski, ben wishaw, adele exarchopoulos)

broker (hirokazu koreeda, w/ bae doona, song kang-ho)

the brutalist (brady corbet, w/ joel edgerton, marion cotillard, mark rylance, sebastian stan, vanessa kirby, raffey cassidy, stacy martin)

three thousand years of longing (george miller, w/ idris elba, tilda swinton)

the northman (robert eggers, w/ alexander skarsgard, anya taylor-joy, nicole kidman, willem dafoe, bjork)

sharpshooter (zhang yimou, w/ zhang yi)

blonde (andrew dominik, w/ ana de armas, adam brody, bobby cannavale)

shining sex (lucile hadzihalilovic, sion sono, hélène cattet & bruno forzani, kleber mendonca filho, bertrand mandico)

armageddon time (james gray, w/ anne hathway, oscar isaac, jeremy strong, cate blanchet, robert de niro)

after yang (kogonada, w/ colin farrell, jodie turner-smith, haley lu richardson)

mona lisa and the blood moon (ana lily amirpour, w/ jeon jong-seo, kate hudson)

a woman escapes (sofia bohdanowicz, blake williams & burak cevik, w/ deragh campbell)

el estado del imperio (amat escalante)

r.m.n. (cristian mungiu)

women talking (sarah polley, w/ frances mcdormand, jessie buckley, rooney mara, claire foy)

killers of the flower moon (martin scorsese, w/ leonardo dicaprio, brendan fraser, jesse plemons, lily gladstone, robert de niro)

the killer (david fincher, w/ michael fassbender, tilda swinton)

the fabelmans (steven spielberg, w/ paul dano, michelle williams, seth rogen)

les cinq diables (léa mysius, w/ adele exarchopoulos, noée abita)

on the count of three (jerrod carmichael, w/ christopher abbott, jerrod carmichael, tiffany haddish)

black glasses (dario argento, w/ asia argento, stacy martin)

ambulance (michael bay, w/ jake gyllenhaal, yahya abdul-mateen)

ecole de l'air (robin campillo)

please baby please (amanda kramer, w/ harry melling, andrea riseborough, demi moore, karl glusman)

tar (todd field, w/ cate blanchett, noémie merlant, nina hoss, mark strong)

the sky is everywhere (josephine decker, w/ grace kaufman, cherry jones, havana rose liu, jason segel)

bullet train (david leitch, w/ brad pitt, andrew koji, logan lerman, aaron taylor-johnson, brian tyree henry, zazie beetz)

one fine morning (mia hansen-love, w/ lea seydoux)

tokyo vice (series) (michael mann, w/ ella rumpf, rinko kikuchi, odessa young, ken watanabe)

cha cha real smooth (cooper raiff, w/ dakota johnson)

am i ok? (tig notaro & stephanie allynne, w/ dakota johnson, sonoya mizuno)

sharp stick (lena dunham, w/ kristine froseth, jon bernthal)

retreat (series) (brit marling & zal batmanglij, w/ emma corrin)

cuckoo (tilman singer, w/ hunter schafer, sofia boutella, gemma chan)

#lists

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lesmiserabelles · 2 years

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tagged by gemma @macbethwitches - thank you, you know i love talking about books!!

last book i bought: my bank account reminds me that it was woman, eating by claire kodha. haven’t read that yet, need to get to it! it’s been sold to me as cool girl vampire fiction

borrowed: i don’t tend to borrow books and i’m not sure i currently have any on my shelves that are due back with someone. maybe stretching the question here, but my last library audiobook loan was a tale of two cities by charles dickens

was gifted: hm actually can’t remember. most people have sort of given up on buying me books because i’ve normally already bought them! i got an arc copy of double booked by lily lindon recently, if that counts? it was pretty good fun - ‘a bisexual bridget jones’ as the publishers are saying

gave/lent to someone: yesterday i lent my gf time is a mother by ocean vuong and she had the audacity not to enjoy it. is it lending if it’s on our shared bookshelf? hmm... otherwise, i think it must be mexican gothic which i lent to a friend

started: time is a mother

finished: time is a mother. are you seeing a pattern here?

gave 5 stars: ...time is a mother. but to be more interesting, some other recent 5 star reads were 100 queer poems, curated by mary jean chan and andrew mcmillan, and diary of a void by emi yagi

gave 2 stars: tripping arcadia by kit mayquist. gorgeous cover, intriguing blurb, and then just not a good reading experience. so disappointing! just didn’t buy any of the characters or plot and the prose was over-written. and i wanted to enjoy it so badly!

didn’t finish: i don’t tend to dnf books but i haven’t touched gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir for like two months so maybe it’s time to admit defeat on that one

tagging: @aconissa @seagreeneyes @at-heart-a-gentleman

#carmella enlightens us

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letterboxd · 3 years

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After Agnès: Ten French Filmmakers to Watch in 2021.

It’s not every day that a grass-roots fandom inspires a Letterboxd Easter egg, but the love for Portrait of a Lady on Fire was so strong that those flames are here to stay. With a new Céline Sciamma fairytale on the horizon, we invited Sarah Williams—one of the #PortraitNation instigators—to highlight ten femmes de cinéma with new works due out this year, and suggest films from their back catalogs to watch now.

Among many dramatic moments in cinema in 2020, there was the resignation of the entire César Academy board, following protests about the nomination of filmmaker and child rapist Roman Polanski (dubbed ‘Violanski’ by French feminists). Then there were the walkouts at the 45th César Awards ceremony itself, led by actress Adèle Haenel, after Polanski won there. Firm calls for change followed from Le Collectif 50/50, a movement that has urged parity on festival selection committees, after seeing how few female filmmakers were allowed into competition categories. (They have had some success, particularly with Cannes, where selection committees have moved towards more transparency and a better gender balance.)

Actress Adèle Haenel has a message for the 2020 César Awards, shortly before walking out of the ceremony.

This year’s Césars were tame, by comparison: actress Corinne Masiero stripped on stage, using her brief spotlight to focus on the pandemic and the crisis of shuttered cinemas across France. May they open as soon as it’s safe, because many of the filmmakers prominent in these social movements have new movies on the horizon. As the older generation retires, this newer group of progressive filmmakers is making waves on the festival scene, working from perspectives often denied or overlooked in mainstream cinema. French cinema is at a sort of crossroads, and the next Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Divines or BPM could be just around the bend.

Letterboxd members are well schooled in the power of Agnès, and Céline Sciamma has entered the worldwide critical sphere—and Letterboxd’s highest ranks—thanks to the success of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (🖼️🔥 forever), but there are many more French storytellers worthy of your watchlists. Alongside Sciamma, here are nine more for your consideration.

Céline Sciamma’s ‘Petite maman’.

Céline Sciamma

Coming soon: Petite maman Watch now: Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood

Before her worldwide hit Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma helmed a trilogy of acclaimed coming-of-age stories, Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood. Her fifth feature, Petite maman, both lives in the world of this trilogy, and radically differs from the trio.

Petite maman premiered at the 2021 Berlinale, where the North-American rights were snapped up by NEON, Sciamma’s partner on Portrait’s release. In the film, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) is eight years old when her grandmother dies, and she goes with her parents to help empty the house. One morning, her mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse) disappears, and she finds a young girl also named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) building a fort in the same place her mother had as a child. A non-traditional view of motherhood, Petite maman’s supposed twist is never meant to be a twist at all, as this Miyazaki-like fairytale never tries to hide where Nelly’s mother really is.

Unlike other time-travel films, Petite maman is not concerned with physics. It’s a gentle act of love that blurs generational lines, answering the question of what it would be like to see life through your parents’ eyes at your age.

What Sciamma does here is radical even for her, creating an entire film that lies in a safer place of childhood. Where in Water Lilies, Girlhood and, especially relevant, Tomboy, shot in the same forests of Cergy, she depicts the full violence that comes with adolescence, the two young girls here console each other, and don’t have a camera on them for the rougher events of their childhoods.

Sciamma’s earlier films about youth feel like personal catharsis, but also unflinchingly show coercion, a child being outed, and teenage gang violence. With Petite maman, the two young girls are allowed to live in the more innocent parts of their childhoods, and though they deal with grief, worries of abandonment, and one nervously awaits a major surgery, Sciamma now tells a weighty story without needing to show pain on screen.

The end result is a warm, nostalgic film that isn’t bound by time period or the specifics of setting. It’s a live-action Ghibli fairytale that, despite having Sciamma’s youngest leads, has matured from her earlier work. The plays acted out by the children sometimes parallel their own stories, and once, in a scene of a countess and maid, almost seem to be calling back to past films, in this case Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Many times, including at the film’s Berlinale Q&A, Sciamma has said she does not write characters, but stories and situations to enter. This feels more than true with this latest effort, a steady hand extended to an audience, promising us that it will be okay, some day.

Alice Diop’s ‘We’.

Alice Diop

Coming soon: We (‘Nous’) Watch now: Towards Tenderness (‘Vers la Tendresse’)

Through the many shortcomings and scandals of France’s César Awards, a memorable win of recent years was Alice Diop’s 2017 award for best short film for Vers la Tendresse (Towards Tenderness), a prize she dedicated to victims of police violence. The film is a 38-minute poetic exploration of how men view sex and romance in the French banlieues (suburbs). One line in the film summarizes Diop’s central thesis: “It’s just hard to talk about love. We don’t know what it is.” These young men struggle to conceptualize love from what they are taught, and their flaws are laid bare in the name of understanding the limitations of masculinity.

Though more abstract, Diop’s new film, We, which had its premiere in the 2021 Berlinale industry selection, comes from a similar desire for collective understanding. The train line of the RER B crosses Paris from north to south, and with it, so does an attempt to connect fragmented stories around the city. The film heavily recalls the Varda tradition that a documentary can be made just by walking and waiting. Using a series of suburban vignettes, Diop is able to piece together a wildlife conservatory of ordinary lives, looking at her own community and trying to capture the warmer side of society. She talks to a mechanic, a writer, and even her own father, in a sort of David Attenborough of human landscapes. We weaves through parts of the city with overwhelmingly Black and immigrant populations, building a nostalgic breed of documentary not focused on the gotcha! reveal.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s ‘An Easy Girl’ (2019).

Rebecca Zlotowski

Coming soon: Les enfants des autres Watch now: An Easy Girl (‘Une fille facile’)

Writer and director Rebecca Zlotowski has steadily released a film every three years since 2010. Her stories have centered on Jewish and North-African characters, and her television series Savages, based on a series of novels from Sabri Louatah, focuses on the attempted assassination of a fictional Arab President-elect in France. Very little has been spilled about Zlotowski’s newest film, Les enfants des autres, which began shooting in March. We know that Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem are attached, and there were casting calls looking for children, and for extras for a scene set in a synagogue.

Though each of her four previous features have their strengths—and I’m even partial to Planetarium, an overzealous magical-realist film about American sisters with a supernatural gift, set in the Parisian film industry around the rise of anti-semitism—2019 Cannes selection An Easy Girl, readily accessible on Netflix, is a choice pick. Notable for its controversial casting of Zahia Dehar, who became infamous for relations with the French national football team while an underage sex worker, this choice proved to be a clever deception in a film about how women said to be easy with men are dismissed.

Dehar plays the older cousin to newcomer Mina Farid’s Naïma, a sixteen year old who longs for her cousin’s seemingly glamorous lifestyle. Naïma soon learns this life isn’t just fashion, but about learning to please wealthy men in order to get what she wants, while never having to give too much of herself away. While most of the director’s closest contemporaries are pioneers of a coherent movement of female gaze, Zlotowski chooses here to shoot through a decidedly male gaze, challenging her audiences’ perceptions of how they treat her characters before we come to understand them.

Also noteworthy is Zlotowski’s debut feature Dear Prudence, based around a diary she’d found in the street. Starring a very young Léa Seydoux as a seventeen-year-old girl who joins a motorcycle gang after the death of her mother, the film’s unique source material makes this Zlotowski’s most intimate film.

Julia Ducournau’s ‘Raw’ (2016).

Julia Ducournau

Coming soon: Titane Watch now: Raw (‘Grave’)

Julia Ducournau’s cult-favorite, coming-of-age, cannibal gorefest Raw quickly made her a name to watch. When Garance Marillier’s Justine tastes meat for the first time at a veterinary-school hazing, it awakens a cannibalistic desire within her. Shot as one would an erotic realization, Raw is at its essence an uncontrollable thread of self discovery.

Already backed by NEON for US distribution, with a possible mid-2021 release date, Ducournau’s follow-up Titane looks to be a wild thriller, if somewhat more traditional than the teenage “monstrous feminine” body-horror of her early work. Much of the production has been kept under wraps, but we know Vincent Lindon stars alongside newcomer Agathe Rousselle. Lindon plays the father of a mysterious young man named Adrien LeGrand, who is found in an airport with a swollen face, claiming to be a boy who had disappeared ten years before. Ducournau is a filmmaker unafraid to shy away from the provocative, and Titane is all but guaranteed a major platform come premiere.

Catherine Corsini’s ‘La Fracture’ (2021).

Catherine Corsini

Coming soon: The Divide (‘La fracture’) Watch now: Summertime (‘La belle saison’), An Impossible Love (‘Un amour impossible’)

Coming a generation before many of the other filmmakers here, Catherine Corsini is best known for her complex romantic dramas. Her most recent are the 1970s feminist-tinged Summertime (2015), starring Cécile de France and Izïa Higelin as a couple torn between rural farmlands and Paris, and An Impossible Love (2018), a novelistic chronicle of a couple (Niels Schneider and Virginie Efira) as their relationship sours from 1958 to the present day.

Summertime, which is currently available to rent or buy in the US, is Corsini’s first film to consciously depict a relationship between two women (though 2001’s Replay is ambiguous as to what is happening between Pascale Bussières and Emmanuelle Béart’s characters). The young lovers learn what freedoms they gain and lose between the pastoral countryside, and the feminist organizers they run with in Paris. It’s a fairly standard romantic arc, but illuminates a fiery counter-culture feminist era, and is a staunchly progressive film from a national cinema built so firmly upon a more traditional view of seduction.

La fracture, Corsini’s latest (and the third film produced by her life partner Elisabeth Perez) centers on yet another couple (Marina Foïs and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) who are on the verge of breaking up when a demonstration outside causes tensions to rise at the hospital they’re confined within. A relationship under strain alongside French protest culture? Extremely French subject matter indeed.

Claire Burger’s ‘Real Love’ (2018).

Claire Burger

Coming soon: Foreign Language (‘Langue étrangère’) Watch now: Real Love (‘C’est ça l’amour’)

Most likely known for her Clouzot-tinged music video for Kompormat’s ‘De mon âme à ton âme’, starring Adèle Haenel, Claire Burger is a filmmaker heavily rooted in location. Her past films, including a graduation short and two features, have been set in the north-eastern town of Forbach, where she grew up, just fifteen minutes from the German border. This looks to be a thread that runs through her next film: Foreign Language is about a friendship between two girls who live on either side of the French-German border. BPM producer Marie-Ange Luciani is set to produce; a poster for BPM made a cameo in Burger’s last feature, Real Love.

A personal story, Real Love is one of non-traditional fatherhood and a family that does not rely on masculinity. When his wife leaves, Mario (Bouli Lanners) is left to raise his two teenage daughters in their small town, all while taking part in a community-theater production. Most of the film is told from the perspective of the younger daughter (Justine LaCroix), experiencing first love with a girl from school, who doesn’t seem to want anything serious.

Notably, after her debut and a lengthy series of short films, this was the first time Burger, who edits her own films, cast professional actors, in the case of Lanners and Antonia Buresi (as a theater director). Yet it is the performance of the actresses playing the sisters that most touched the hearts of Letterboxd fans—as Lyd writes, “Maybe it was the opera music or the fantastic performances by Justine Lacroix and Sarah Henochsberg as the daughters, but it just affirmed so many things about life choices and the tipsy-turvy nature of love as just, everything.”

Marie Amachoukeli’s ‘Party Girl’ (2014).

Marie Amachoukeli

Coming soon: Rose Hill Watch now: Party Girl

A rare non-Sciamma project backed by producer Bénédicte Couvreur, Marie Amachoukeli’s solo debut is much anticipated, after Party Girl, where she was one-third of a directing trio with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis (who is shooting a feature of his own titled Petite Nature). Outside the collaborations with Burger, which began in film school, Amachoukeli is screenwriting for a number of films including Franco Lolli’s The Defendant, and has collaborated with animator Vladimir Mavounia-Kouka on two shorts, The Cord Woman and I Want Pluto to Be a Planet Again. A synopsis has yet to be released for Rose Hill, but in an old interview with Brain magazine, Amachoukeli mentioned searching for backers for a lesbian spy comedy.

Party Girl is essentially docu-fiction, with actors cast as versions of themselves building an authentic troupe of real people. Though it’s a collaboration, Amachoukeli shines as a screenwriter, introducing the story of a bar hostess who still lives the partying, single life of a woman in her twenties, despite having reached sixty. She is thrown when a man asks her to marry him, and she must reconstruct her outlook on love. From such young filmmakers, Party Girl is a sensitive portrait of an imperfect, ageing woman, which feels so rare in a cinematic landscape that longs for a fountain of youth.

Audrey Diwan’s ‘Happening’ (2021).

Audrey Diwan

Coming soon: Happening (‘L’evenement’) Watch now: Losing It (‘Mais vous êtes fous’)

French memoirist Annie Ernaux works by reconstructing her life over and over as time passes. One of her more well-known books, L’év��nement, retraces her experiences trying to get an abortion in 1963, during a time when the procedure was banned in France.

Audrey Diwan—whose 2019 debut film Losing It follows a pair of young parents (the always-charming Pio Marmaï and Céline Sallette) working through the father’s spiral into addiction and recovery—has a knack for solid performances. She’s able to write a relationship under strain with nuance, and Céline Sallette’s character shows strength as a mother choosing between protecting her children and repairing her relationship to their troubled but good-hearted father, whom she still loves dearly. This skill for writing family should pair well with Ernaux’s deeply personal prose.

Happening sweeps up a small army of promising young actors: Being 17 star Kacey Mottet Klein, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire and School’s Out supporting breakout Luana Bajrami, appear alongside lead actress Anamaria Vartolomei. Her character, Anne, is a bright student who risks everything once her pregnancy starts showing, so that she can finish her studies. Audrey Diwan’s film isn’t the only Ernaux adaptation currently, with Danielle Arbid’s Passion Simple having premiered at Venice in 2020.

Claire Simon’s ‘I Want to Talk about Duras’ (2021).

Claire Simon

Coming soon: I Want to Talk About Duras Watch now: Mimi

One of few figures to bridge cinema and literature equally, Marguerite Duras was a social commentator on her world; she grew up poor in French-colonized Vietnam, took on a staunch leftist perspective, and developed a singular tone in her observational assertions. Duras’s 1975 film India Song, based on her novel of the same name, was a landmark in feminist film. Through a hypnotic structure (“a viewing experience like no other, one that touches all of the senses,” writes Carter on Letterboxd), India Song delivers a strong criticism of class and colonialism through its story of Anne-Marie Stretter (Delphine Seyrig), a French ambassador’s wife in 1930s Kolkata.

In I Want to Talk About Duras, writer-director Claire Simon (best known for her documentaries on the seemingly mundane) adapts a transcript of conversations between Duras (Emmanuelle Devos) and her much younger partner Yann Andréa Steiner (Swann Arlaud), in which the pair break down the codes of love and literature. These conversations were published in a book named after Steiner, who met Duras when he approached her after a screening of India Song.

The highlight of Simon’s previous work is Mimi, in which she settles down in the countryside with an old friend, and tells her life story over 105 minutes. Recently programmed as part of Metrograph’s Tell Me: Women Filmmakers series, it’s clear the film was selected for its authenticity. However, many Letterboxd members may heavily benefit from seeing The Graduation, her 2016 documentary about the famous Parisian film school La Fémis, and its difficult selection process. Most of the other filmmakers in this list passed through its gates, and Claire Simon’s Wiseman-lite documentary sheds light on the challenges these young people take upon themselves for a chance at a world-renowned filmmaking education.

Amandine Gay’s ‘Speak Up’ (2017).

Amandine Gay

Coming soon: A Story of One’s Own (‘Une histoire à soi’) Watch now: Speak Up (‘Ouvrir la voix’)

Amandine Gay has much to say about access to film school—and opportunities in the film industry—for those outside the mainstream. Initially on the radar for her Afro-feminist activism, Gay arrived on the cinema scene with Speak Up, a narrative reclamation focusing on the diaspora in France and Belgium.

Talking to Francophone Black women who may not be considered formal scholars, allowing her subjects to speak as experts on their own experiences, Gay disproves the idea that France is a race-blind society. She shoots mainly in regal close-ups and using natural light, allowing her subjects the clarity to speak for themselves, unfiltered. (And to put to bed the misconception that Black performers are harder to light, one of many important angles discussed in an excellent interview with Letterboxd member Justine Smith.)

Using family photos and home videos from subjects, Gay’s engaging documentary work is a mouthpiece to spark conversation. Her next documentary, Une histoire à soi, centers on transnational adoption and will likely take a similarly conversational approach in exploring a unique cultural divide; putting the microphone in front of those who can provide a first-person point of view. Though not officially backed yet, she’s also—for years!—teased a Black lesbian sommelier film on podcasts and in interviews. That’s a story that I hope won’t need much more maturing before we see it. A votre santé.