That Tender Touch

I was really surprised by this movie. Made in America in 1969, I expected That Tender Touch to employ any and all homophobic cliches and little else in its writing. I assumed the movie would be basic, bottom of the barrel exploitation. While the film does not do anything so radical as to allow its lesbian characters a happy, homosexual ending, the film is surprisingly nuanced with good writing and acting.

That Tender Touch is about Marsha and Terri, two women who begin the movie in a lesbian relationship. However, between heterosexual pressures and the increasingly strained relationship between herself and Marsha, Terri decides to marry a man. Some time after the marriage, Marsha shows up on Terri’s doorstep asking for a place to stay. Marsha then tries to win Terri back from her husband which Terri never fully gets on board with. Suffering a psychological collapse, Marsha kills herself.

I am definitely grading on a curve when I call this movie not as homophobic as I thought. Had this movie been made today, I probably would’ve been pissed off at a lot of the stuff they did. It’s suggested that the only reason Terri was with Marsha was because she was raped. Marsha also does sometimes come off as the older, controlling, borderline predatory older lesbian who lures wayward girls towards the evils of homosexuality. And yes, the film does end with Marsha killing herself. 

However, there are also surprisingly modern aspects to the film. Marsha is overall a likeable, openly lesbian character with depth. The film also reiterates several times that Terri is not at fault for her own rape. That’s a pretty low bar, but for the film to understand this and portray it as a universal point of view for the characters is something that I didn’t expect in a movie from 1969. In fact, I’d still probably praise the way it was handled if I saw it in a movie now. There’s also very frank, open sexual talk between Terri and her husband which again, I was not expecting from this time period. The sex scenes and depictions of nudity were also surprisingly good. The sex scenes felt frank and realistic and not completely over the top. This movie just kept surprising me by not being the worst.

The movie is also well-paced and filled with characters, not stereotypes. Marsha is a three-dimensional character who is sympathetic. So is Terri. The dialogue in this movie is good and actresses Sue Bernard and Bee Tompkins do well with it. They also do not hesitate when it comes to the lesbian aspect of portraying these characters which is good.

That Tender Touch is not perfect, but it’s better than I expected and far better than it needed to be. This is still technically an exploitation film. As such there’s really no motivation for writer/director Russel Vincent to make this good. I expected gratuitous nudity and sex, wooden characters and constant homophobia. Vincent defied all of my expectations and turned out a pretty solid movie. Yes, it does adhere to some of the homophobia of the time period and some of the conventions of exploitation film. But in a lot of ways, this movie more forward-thinking than lots of WLW films released in the following two decades. That Tender Touch is a surprisingly nuanced film for the time. Over 50 years later, it’s still worth a watch.

Overall rating: 5.9/10

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