Lesbian August

We’ve got ourselves a real winner here today, folks. I don’t know about the rest of you but one thing I love to see in movies about women loving women is when the movie itself doesn’t like women. Lesbian August does not respect nor like women even a little.

Lesbian August is about painter Alexis, his wife, Elena and daughter by his first wife, Christina. Elena and Christina are having an affair. However, when they meet local fisherman Kostas, Christina begins to flirt with him and eventually invites him to have sex with her. Kostas’ wife tells him if he sleeps with her, she will kill him. Likewise, Elena tells Christina that their relationship will suffer if she sleeps with Kostas. Both ignore this advice and have sex. Christina decides once was enough and returns to Elena. Kostas however, becomes obsessed with Christina, her rejection of him and wants to humiliate her.

Later, Alexis discovers the affair between Elena and Christina. His response is three-fold. First, he is inspired to paint a lesbian-themed painting. Second, he decides to send Christina away. Third, he rapes Elena. This causes Elena to poison Alexis. Kostas happens to be around to witness his death and uses this to try and blackmail Christina into meeting with him. However, a mysterious woman stabs him. Kostas’ brother witnesses this and goes after Elena and Christina. At the police station, Elena and Christina try and play off the poisoning as an accident and blame Kostas’ wife for his stabbing. But twist! Kostas is alive and accuses Christina. He also reveals that when he saw Alexis die, Alexis wrote on his painting that Elena killed him. The film ends with Elena and Christina’s arrested and Kostas and his wife going home together.

I don’t know who, if any of the characters the filmmakers wanted us to root for. Everyone’s a terrible person. The men are all misogynists who hit and rape women and the women are murderesses. The only half-decent character is Kostas’ wife but she’s hardly in the movie. I don’t know what the movie wanted me to think when Christina and Elena were arrested. Was I supposed to cheer because they’d been caught? Because I was rooting for them the whole time. Assuming I wasn’t the intended audience, then I guess Kostas is the intended hero? But he’s a horrible guy who’s obsessed with a teenager and neglects his perfectly rational wife. The fact that he got a happy ending didn’t make me feel good.

This movie just doesn’t like women. I don’t even know where to begin with evidence for that claim. Do I start with the rape? The physical abuse? The fact that the director clearly has in knowledge of how lesbian sex works and no interest in learning? The biggest problem the treatment of Kostas’ obsession with Christina. The film largely paints Christina as the problem in this situation. The film seems to think that Kostas’ desire to humiliate her is justified. By contrast, Christina is portrayed as a bitchy temptress. I’m pretty sure Christina is supposed to be a teenager in the film. Yet it is the teen girl the film blames for Kostas’ violent obsession.

Honestly, the film’s directing isn’t terrible. It’s the writing in this movie that sinks it, not the directing. Lesbian August is low budget and has technical limitations but within the limitations, it’s not the worst. There’s some knowledge of film making and an understanding of what kind of story they could tell given their budget. I can’t say it’s well directed and it’s still bad to look at but I can’t see how they could’ve improved the product other than having a higher budget.

My final problem with Lesbian August is the score. It’s an overly utilized score that’s basically just discordant strings. It’s bad to listen to. There’s also a specific music queue for lesbian activity which is basically a chorus of women going “ooooooooohhhh” somewhat discordantly. It constantly made me expect ghosts. Don’t put a chorus of spooky oohs in your soundtrack if you’re not gonna have ghosts!

Lesbian August sucks. As much as I said I didn’t hate the directing, this movie is still bad and bad to look at. Beyond looking at the film, the story is basic and its entire reason for being seems to be to punish, blame and harm women. This is not a movie to watch if you respect women as people which I assume most of my audience does. Even if you are a misogynist, there’s lots of sexist movies that have a higher budget. You don’t need to stoop to a forgotten Greek exploitation film to see hatred of women. Lots of movies still do that.

Overall rating: 2.3/10

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