Desert Hearts

I've seen this movie at least a dozen times and it never fails to make me cry. It's a simple love story, but the fact that it's two women in love in Nevada in the 1950's gives it special significance. Unlike a lot of lesbian movies that were made in the 1980's, this one isn't all doom and gloom. It's actually a movie that will make you remember being young, impulsive and in love. It leaves the

viewer feeling hopeful about the future. Vivian Bell is a professor who comes to Nevada in the 1950's for a quickie divorce from her husband. While there she

meets Cay Rivers and Cay opens up a whole new world to her and makes

Vivian realize there's more to life than her stuffy, professional existence in New York. In addition, this movie has the most touching, intimate, erotic, and soulful love scene that I have EVER seen between 2 women in a movie.

A stuffy professor heads to Reno for a quickie divorce and becomes infatuated with a young woman who lives at the ranch where she's staying. Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau have sizzling chemistry as the romantic leads and this film has a nice distinction of being one of the few lesbian themed films that doesn't end in appalling tragedy or sugary sweetness. It's down to earth, smart, sexy, and incredibly entertaining.

When it comes to love movies - usually we get a man loves a woman and hopefully vice versa. In this case we get two women ... or at least one that is quite sure what she wants and who she loves. At a time when love like that was more than just forbidden .... and even those who may have feelings of ... well let's just say even they had issues to deal with those things.

A womans touch - no pun intended - something the movie really needed and profited from. I'm not saying that a man wouldn't have done a solid job with the source novel, but you feel that it was crucial to have a woman for this. Not just for the intimate scenes. This really is an underrated movie, with superb performances - not just for the time it was made, but in general.

"Desert Hearts" makes me feel all warm and romantic whenever I think about it, and this I attribute mostly to director Deitch. Credit is also due to screenwriter Natalie Cooper for making sense of Jane Rule's molasses-thick quagmire of a novel, and to a super cast of supporting players. Alex McArthur is James-Dean-cute in his fresh and much welcome film debut as Cay's charmingly sensitive brother Walter. Audra Lindley is great as Cay's dear gruff mom Frances, and Andra Akers, new to me, purrs and scintillates as Silver. The soundtrack is one-of-a-kind wonderful with Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald and on and on. I can't tell you how many times I saw "Desert Hearts" in a theater but for months after, a certain song (or a lone train whistle) would evoke sweet haunting memories...

As for Cay and Vivian, Patricia Charbonneau and Helen Shaver portray two sympathetic and instantly familiar female characters, but I've gotta give this to Donna, too. Why? Because this is the only production in which Shaver and Charbonneau (sounds good when you say 'em together!) rise above their usual below-average efforts. (I've seen enough of their film and TV work to make an admittedly personal judgment.) My gut feeling is that Deitch created a safe environment of honesty and acceptance, and encouraged and nurtured the heck out of her allegedly straight stars. In return they offered her an intimate duet of performances that, like the sleek sexy tailfins on Cay's Buick convertible, gave us a classic.

I was 17 when I first watched this movie and I had never seen a lesbian film before which treated the lesbian characters with such respect. Also, I had never seen such a passionate love scene between two women, needless to say after that scene I could no longer deny my own lesbianism. Great use of Patsy Cline's music.