Behind Closed Doors

I don’t ascribe to the belief that only genuine queer women should be “allowed” to make WLW films. Just like queer women are allowed to write about characters who aren’t queer women, so too can those who aren’t queer women write stories about this group. What I do believe is that there can be an added level of difficulty. It’s a more uphill battle to craft a believable, true character who is part of a group the creator isn’t personally familiar with. And that’s what we’ve got here today. Behind Closed Doors is a film about the experience of four different lesbians. Based on the name and pronouns, I don’t think director Kamal Smith identifies as a queer woman. Regardless of identity, Behind Closed Doors focuses solely on queer tragedy for the purpose of what is clearly a presumed heterosexual audience.

The framework for Behind Closed Doors is that of a local church in Atlanta and its attendants. The pastor of this church is very homophobic. Despite this, at least four members of his congregation are queer women. The film focuses on the experiences of Anissa, Johnnise, Lynn and the pastor’s daughter, Marinda. The film covers a lot of ground within these four stories. Conflict such as extortion, adultery, false accusations and getting an STI are some of the plot points these women deal with in their individual stories.

Behind Closed Doors seems to mean well. It wants to advance the cause of acceptance of queer women, especially within the religious African American community. I see and respect the attempt. But it’s very obvious that this is a movie by straight people and for straight people. There’s very little depth to the actual exploration of sexuality here. Instead, the film inadvertently reinforces several stereotypes about lesbians. The film doesn’t have anything to say about lesbian sexuality other than it seems to be a non-stop ride of tragedy, drama and trauma. The last act of this film deals with a suicide. And this suicide causes the homophobic pastor to have a change of heart. And I really didn’t like this. I’m not open to seeing queer tragedy used as a catalyst for heterosexual growth.

While there’s a lot of exploration of queer tragedy in this film, there is so little queer joy. None of the queer women get happy endings. Well, Johnnise seems happy but her ending isn’t queer. This also means we miss out on seeing a very literal representation of practising what one preaches. During the pro-gay sermon, would it not be good to cut to the crowd and see two women together, happy? We don’t get that. We get various sad, single queer women while Johnnise, now with a boyfriend is the only one partnered and happy. With so many queer women in this film, it’s hard not to see this as pointed. Behind Closed Doors covers so much ground in terms of plot and drama that could happen to gay women. But it completely fails to explore the possibility that being gay sometimes really does mean being happy.

The writing, directing and acting in Behind Closed Doors also aren’t worth much. This is a low-budget movie, and you can tell. The worst aspect probably is the dialogue. This screenplay has never heard of the words nuance and subtly. One of the reasons the film manages to cover so much ground is because its characters have a habit of giving nice, bite-sized summations of their whole character arc or conflict. Sure, this blatant exposition helps move the story along. But it’s at the sacrifice of any sort of character development or anything I could call “good writing.”

I think Behind Closed Doors strengthened stereotypes and misconceptions more than it changed minds and hearts. If ever there was a time where straight audiences needed to see extreme tragedy to sympathize with another group, I think we’re past that. The fact that there’s so many queer women in this movie makes all of its problems worse. You’d think just by law of averages that one of these stories would be relatable or at least, happy. But it’s just tragic melodrama and poorly written characters across the board.

Overall rating: 2.6/10

Other WLW films in similar genres