A film lover’s guide to sapphic cinema

One year before Akerman revolutionised cinema with her depiction of domestic drudgery in Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the Belgian director released Je, Tu, Il, Elle. Julie, lives alone in an apartment whose furniture she constantly rearranges as we overhear her diaries. After hitchhiking and hooking up with a male driver, she meets her female lover at home. The extended, experimental sex scene was just as revolutionary for its depiction of queer sex. 

The first feature film from Barbara Hammer is a striking journey through the history of queer marginalization in the 20th century that sees the famously feminist director weaves together archive footage and interviews with videos of four queer couples—two elderly lesbians, an interracial gay male couple, two young women of colour, and an S/M lesbian couple—making love on screen. 

Lukas Moodyson’s portrait of sapphic love between two schoolgirls—one a social outcast and the other the most popular girl at school—is a fantastic film through and through, but the moment that will live with you occurs about halfway through the film, as our protagonists share their first kiss to Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is playing on the car radio. As well as featuring one of the great movie needledrops, It’s a moment that perfectly captures both the fleetingness and eternality of first love. 

The hot-blooded chemistry between Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly is the core of Bound, Lily & Lana Wachowski’s sensual debut about an ex-convict who enters a dangerous love affair with the wife of an unhinged mobster. A devilishly erotic and genuinely thrilling neo-noir, Bound is a sapphic classic that puts the ‘smoking’ in ‘smoking gun’

A perfect double feature to Bound, Park Chan-wook’s instant classic period thriller The Handmaiden begins as a world-weary game of deception before revealing itself as a triumph of sapphic romance. The movie sees Kim Tae-ri as a lowly pickpocket who is hired by a smooth-talking con-man (Ha Jung-woo) to swindle a Japanese heiress (Kim Min-hee) of her fortune. Posing as her handmaiden, the plan begins to go awry when unexpected emotions bubble between the two.

Todd Haynes’ beloved historical drama (and certified Christmas classic) stars Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett as two women, one a young photographer and the other a mother and soon-to-be divorcee, embarking on a forbidden love-affair against the backdrop of 1950s New York City, where societal pressure threatens to tear their relationship apart.

A key milestone of Asian-American cinema and one of the great sapphic rom-coms, Alice Wu’s Saving Face proved that lesbian stories could indeed have a happy ending. A Chinese-American lesbian (Michelle Krusiec)  navigates love, identity, and family secrets while helping her pregnant, traditional mother (Joan Chen) find acceptance and happiness.

The first feature film to be directed by a Black lesbian, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman follows Dunye herself as its protagonist, a young Black lesbian filmmaker working at a video store while trying to make a movie about Fae Richards, a forgotten Black actress from the 1930s.

Though Jamie Babbit’s hilarious satire—about a highschool cheerleader (Natasha Lyonne) who is sent by her parents to a conversion therapy camp to “cure” her lesbianism—polarised critics upon release, it’s since become a queer cult-favourite for it’s sharp commentary on sexuality and social conformity.

Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of A Lady on Fire has quickly become one of the seminal queer dramas of the 21st century, but those looking for more of Sciamma’s bittersweet brand of sapphic romance should visit her directorial debut Water Lilies which explores a young girls infatuation with an older girl (Floriane, played by Adèle Haenel) in her synchronized swimming class. 

A reserved professor seeking a divorce unexpectedly falls for a free-spirited woman in Donna Deitch’s intimate lesbian romance. Set in Nevada in the late-1950s and filled with sapphic yearning, Desert Hearts is often described as the first feature film to “de-sensationalise lesbianism.”