Therese and Isabelle

Therese and Isabelle was made in 1968. This makes it pretty ancient for a WLW film. I went into it excited to see some vintage, schoolgirl lesbians. And yeah, the movie has that. But I was missing a key piece of information about this movie. Therese and Isabelle’s director, Radley Metzger’s filmography is made up of mostly hardcore pornographic features. Therese and Isabelle is itself not pornographic, but you know who’s really bad at writing well-rounded characters and engaging relationships? Porn directors.

Therese and Isabelle follows Therese as she goes to visit her old boarding school. Flashbacks subsequently reveal she had a relationship with a girl named Isabelle. The movie just ambles along without major conflict. It follows Therese and Isabelle’s relationship which is more sleazy than cute. At the end, Isabelle suddenly leaves. Therese cries about this until another student tells her not to. This is enough for Therese to recover and they run off playing ball together. The narration just says “I never saw Isabelle again.” Because even the movie itself knows this relationship wasn’t really that deep. Still, at least neither of them die, I guess.

As I mentioned previously, porn directors aren’t good at characters or dialogue. The characters are schoolgirls yet the words coming out of their mouth so far from the way schoolgirls or any human female talks. It is borderline disturbing to hear dialogue that so blatantly was written by a middle-aged man come out of the mouths of young women. And aside from the character trait of not sounding like real-life girls, I can’t remember any characterization from either of the two leads. Therese and Isabelle are probably perfect for each other because they’re both exceedingly bland.

The only thing that saves Therese and Isabelle from being out and out boring is the its overlay of sleaze. There’s absolutely nothing to this movie, no plot, no character, no conflict. Without being able to veer off into characters just explicitly fucking, Radley Metzger seems at a loss for what to do. And even without explicit sexuality, Therese and Isabelle still have off-screen sex in a chapel. During this scene, Therese talks about how they revel in the sin they are committing. It’s not great.

The best thing I can say about Therese and Isabelle is that at least the director knows how lesbian sex works. This was far from a given in 1968 and hell, still not a given in movies from this decade. But that’s not nearly enough to make this movie something I’d recommend. What little there is to this movie is sleazy and not fun sleaze either. Therese and Isabelle is a movie that upon completion, the only question you will have is which urge did it illicit more strongly; the urge to take a nap or take a shower.

Overall rating: 3.5/10

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