The War Widow

1976 is a dead zone for WLW films. The War Widow is the only movie I can find from this year that has notable WLW content and isn’t porn. And I’m stretching my definition of what I include on the site just to have a film to represent 1976. Technically, The War Widow is a TV episode. It’s an episode of a series called Visions. Visions released stand-alone stories that ran approximately 90 minutes. So, it is basically a TV movie. Still, this technicality means I would’ve ignored The War Widow were it released in any year other than 1976.

The War Widow takes place during World War 1. Its focus is a wife and mother named Amy whose husband is away at war. Amy struggles with having any sort of fulfillment or happiness in her life. Then, she meets Jenny. Unlike most women at the time, Jenny has a job. She’s a photographer. Amy and Jenny become fast friends as Jenny offers variety and meaning to Amy’s life. Eventually, Jenny confesses her romantic feelings towards Amy. Amy then struggles with the choice between the known expectations of her as a wife and mother and a risky shot at genuine happiness.

The War Widow definitely looks like a TV movie. It lacks the grandeur of even cheap feature films from the 70’s. Actually, it almost feels like a stage play. There’s a few more locations than a standard play but all locations feature most action taking place in singular rooms. Really what I mean when I say it feels like a stage play is that you can very much tell that they shot all of this movie on a sound stage. Still, this isn’t a story that needed a lot of dressing up or exterior location shots. The priority here is a small, character-driven story. The dialogue is the focus of the film and shines regardless of the mediocre production design.

When I started the film, I wrote that it’s stuffy, repressed and inhibited. And that’s still true to an extent. But unlike something like Between Two Women, there is freedom, happiness and layers to this stuffy inhibition. Amy’s life is undoubtedly dull and unsatisfactory. But Jenny represents an opportunity for freedom from this. Sure, even Jenny wears clothing that looks more Civil War than World War 1, but she is radical in a silent way, as is the film. The stuffiness has a point. And in scenes between Jenny and Amy, that repressed stuffiness falls away as they kind someone they can be their honest selves with.

Amy and Jenny’s romance is one built on small moments of kindness (and Jenny occasionally dropping an overtly thirsty line). Jenny’s attraction is immediate but they’re friends before anything else. Their closeness comes from an understanding the two women share that they’ve found nowhere else in their lives. It also comes from a simple place of kindness. Especially for Amy, Jenny is the only person who offers her unconditional kindness and kinship.

I had unfounded worries that because it’s a 1976 TV movie, The War Widow’s overt lesbianism would be underplayed. I expected subtext instead of overt text. Physically, that is true to a degree. There sure aren’t any kissing scenes in The War Widow. But the third act does feature Amy expressing her feelings clearly and without doubt. The dialogue is extremely clear that this is a story about romantic love between women. There’s also some poetry and romance to it. There’s a lovely scene where Amy explains to her mother that not only that she does love Jenny but the “why” of her affection. The way Amy talks about Jenny is moving and quite sweet.

I expected the entire movie that Amy’s husband would die because that would make things easier. The War Widow doesn’t take this easy route. Amy has a living, deployed husband the entire time she falls in love with Jenny. At the end of the film, the war is over and her husband, who seems to genuinely love Amy is set to return. Still, Amy chooses Jenny. And it’s not just that she chooses romance. Choosing Jenny also means giving up her role as a mother. This is a story of a woman with a deployed husband and young child giving that up for a lesbian romance. It’s a delight and surprise that Amy is a a sympathetic, likeable main character whose choice of happiness with Jenny is portrayed as generally good.

The War Widow undoubtedly looks like a 1976 TV movie. But within that framework, there is a sweet, small yet quietly radical romance. The film starts slow but by the end, the story really impressed me. It feels like a complete portrait of a woman’s life and an unexpected romance. The romance itself has a solid foundation and some moments of beautiful dialogue in the last act. As the sole WLW film representing 1976, I am pleased to say that The War Widow is a success.

Overall rating: 6.3/10

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