Purple Sea

Purple Sea takes place in a coastal Italian village during the 19th century. Unruly Angela has the misfortune of being the daughter of an abusive misogynist who constantly punishes her for not being born a boy. As a child, Angela’s best friend is Sara. But Sara leaves the town for long enough that when she returns, new, grown-up actresses now portray her and Angela. Once they reunite as adults, Angela begins pursuing Sarah romantically. Sara has similar feelings for Angela so she allows Angela’s advances. However, Sara worries about their relationship because it’s a sin and she has a fiance at one point. Angela’s father eventually finds out and locks Angela in the cellar for a period of weeks or months.

Then, Angela’s mother comes up with an insane plan which will change Angela’s life forever. Angela’s mother blackmails the local priest into saying that turns out, everyone was wrong the whole time. Angela is actually a boy. When she was born, everyone was just confused, apparently. So, Angela becomes Angelo and in very little time, the community starts going along with it. Her father also chills as now he has the son he’s always wanted so Angela gets to inherit his business. Angela also gets to marry Sara though of course, they are incapable of conceiving a child together.

Purple Sea was based on a book and I have to imagine in the novel, Angela’s transition to Angelo was a little more drawn out. In the movie, it severely suspends my disbelief. Everyone in this small village knew Angela as a female for her whole life. Yet, when she’s reintroduced as Angelo, almost everyone goes along with it pretty immediately. The movie has enough super sad bits that I’m not longing for more characters to be up in arms about this, but the plot is a bit hard to believe.

But as I said, there’s enough sad stuff in Purple Sea already. I’ve been watching a lot of modern queer movies recently where there’s a focus on moving past homophobia into non-sexuality specific conflicts. While not completely ancient, Purple Sea was released in 2009. That’s firmly in the time period where queer movies believed the best way to get empathy from their audiences was to throw constant sad shit at their queer characters. As such, Angela is beaten constantly, locked in a cellar, nearly raped and ultimately doesn’t end the movie happily. If you want to see a movie that depicts how bad it could be for queer people and women, watch this one. If you’re sick and tired of seeing queer women abused and not get a happy ending, maybe don’t watch Purple Sea.

Purple Sea reminds me a lot of Elisa and Marcela. Both are period piece romances involving masquerading as a man to marry one’s lesbian lover. I didn’t like Elisa and Marcela. And while Purple Sea is a more uneven film, I liked it a lot more. This felt like the film Elisa and Marcela should be. Where Elisa and Marcela felt constantly flat, Purple Sea feels alive. As much as Purple Sea can feel rushed and over-stuffed, it is a film brimming with energy and potential. That’s basically the opposite of how Elisa and Marcela felt.

The biggest problem with the film is that it has too much going on and that’s mostly stuffed into the first half of the film. The second half mostly focuses on Angela and Sara living as a wedded couple and comparatively minor issues of Angela pretending to be a man. The first half has enough drama for several movies. So yes, the film does feel over-stuffed but I’ve seen a lot of WLW films recently that didn’t have enough plot to sustain their run times and I consider that the worst sin. I’d rather a film feel rushed than boring, generally. And Purple Sea was never boring.

Purple Sea is ultimately an uneven but beautiful film. There are good performances and clear passion coming from behind the camera. The fact that the film does make its queer characters go through so much turmoil can definitely be off-putting but if you want a WLW film where you really feel the queer struggle and it makes you cry, Purple Sea might be a film to check out.

Overall rating: 6.5/10

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