lesbians in reno!

Warning: Contains Spoilers for the Objectively Best Queer Cowboy Film

Don’t tell my parents or the FBI, but in high school, I pirated many movies. I torrented my way through the back catalog of queer cinema: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and But I’m a Cheerleader! and Pink Flamingos. But my most crucial 123movies.com find was the gay cowboy movie. You know, the super-vibey slow-burn forlorn-American-West-landscape one, the seminal LGBT-rep one, the one with stolen glances and secret touches. No, I don’t mean Brokeback Mountain. I mean Desert Hearts (1985). Since my first fateful watch, it has cemented the top spot in my personal list of Best Films Ever Made.

Like most good cinema, this one opens with divorce. Our protagonist Vivian is a foxy Columbia professor seeking to expedite her separation by establishing residency in Reno, Nevada. Nevada, I learned, lets you get divorced after living there for six weeks. In Georgia, for comparison, the process takes six months. In New York, it’s a whole year. Ms. Vivian wants to ditch her hubby ASAP, and there’s a whole industry catering to that desire; she stays at a Reno ranch dedicated to women establishing residencies specifically for divorce. The proprietor of this legal-loophole watering hole is Frances. Frances is something like a mother to young woman Cay, since Cay has the classic dead dad/deadbeat mom combo. When Cay & Vivian meet, sparks fly.

C & V’s meet-cute is truly epic. Frances drives Vivian through the dreamy, dusty Nevada landscape. Cay comes opposite them in her truck, then, seeing the hot new professor, DRIVES BACKWARDS so their cars maintain speed in the same direction, spitting sweet talk towards Vivian all the while. That scene alone is worth watching the film for.

Really, there’s very many reasons to watch. There’s the fashion. To quote Letterboxd user Sarah: “I genuinely love how they didn’t even try to disguise those 80s hairstyles for a story set in the late-1950s. Gay repression is strong, but 80s perms are even stronger.” Plus, all the double-denim, super-high-wasted shorts, and cowboy hats. The setting has that desert town je ne sais quoi, with dilapidated casinos and slowtime square dancing. There’s also A Scene You Don’t Want to Watch With Your Parents of great historic import: it’s the first time general movie theater audiences saw an intimate scene on-screen between two women. 

 

 

The film overall holds a key place in the queer cannon because it doesn’t end in freaking tragedy. To quote Wikipedia: “It is regarded as the first feature film to ‘de-sensationalize lesbianism’ by presenting a positive portrayal of a lesbian romance.” It’s something of a cliche that most LGBT characters, especially in the past, don’t get happy endings (looking at you, Brokeback Mountain). This is a tradition likely born of centuries of continued persecution and oppression, and can be both an effective and truthful storytelling decision. But, also, if I’m being honest, I want the girlies to win sometimes. In contrast, the ending of Desert Hearts is so so so sweet. I squeal out loud like a suckling pig every time I watch it.

In most cases, the book is better than the movie. I myself cannot vouch for Desert Hearts’ literary predecessor, Jane Rule’s 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, but only because I haven’t read it. It does have a whopping 3.9/5 Goodreads rating and the Irish book club Bibliofemme did nominate it for the top 10 gay novels, if you care about that kind of thing. The book also was as pioneering as the film (from Wikipedia: “It was one of the very few novels addressing lesbianism that was published in hardback form; most books during this period with female homosexuality as a topic were considered lesbian pulp fiction until 1969.”)

If you’re ready for a film to reach in and put a string of lights around your heart this June, Desert Hearts is the one. Its vibe curation is immaculate -- consider that after the painstaking, four-year fundraising process for the film, 20% of the budget went to securing MUSIC RIGHTS for the specific songs the director wanted. She, the director Donna Deitch, was so insistent on having Helen Shaver play Vivian that Deitch refused to hang up a phone call until Shaver agreed to pass up another, more lucrative movie opportunity. Desert Hearts is a labor of love, and it most definitely shows.

Click here to buy Desert of the Heart from us: https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9781594930355