Discrimination,
life, and love among women in Vancouver, British Columbia,
are featured in the film Better than Chocolate,
directed by Anne Wheeler. Nineteen-year-old Maggie (played
by Karyn Dwyer) has just dropped out of college, is sleeping
on the couch in a back room of the Lesbian-run Ten Percent
Bookstore, and is trying to get her life together. She is
awakened in the morning by a telephone call from her mother
Lila (played by Wendy Crewson), who has broken up with her
father; mom then announces that she is coming with her seventeen-year-old
brother Paul (played by Kevin Mundy) to move into her apartment.
Quickly, Maggie reads an ad in a local gay/Lesbian tabloid
for a sub-lease and moves into a flat on the upper floor of
a warehouse. Maggie also meets Kim (played by Christina Cox)
and has passionate sex with her; while the two are still in
bed, her mother and brother arrive to move in. The mother,
aged over 40, believing that the best years of her life have
passed, engages in the one pleasure that cannot be denied
her-eating chocolates. While other loves are taking time to
come to fruition, we are exposed to Vancouver's conservatism.
Customs holds up a shipment of books identified as "obscene,"
threatening the livelihood of the bookstore owner Carla (played
by Marya Delver), whose solution is to call reporters to witness
a police raid, but the press never shows up. Maggie and Kim
try to kiss in a coffee house next to the book store, whereupon
Tony (played by Tony Nappo) the male owner tells them to leave.
Nasty graffiti are chalked onto the sidewalk in front of both
shops. Skinheads taunt Lesbians and ultimately set fire to
the two shops. Inside the women's toilet a butch Lesbian beats
up transgendered Judy (played by Peter Outerbridge), a female
trapped in a male body who is scheduled to have an operation.
Judy's family writes to say that they never want to have any
more contact. Lila treats Maggie like a child, needles her
about boyfriends, and refuses to acknowledge that her daughter
is in love with another Lesbian. Love and sex patch up all
those who are hurt. After many rebuffed overtures, Carla finally
falls for Judy. Paul brother has what appears to be his first
satisfying sexual experience with a good-looking bisexual
female. Maggie and Kim make love, fall in love, have a spat,
and get together in the end. And Lila discovers among various
sex toys under her bed a battery-operated vibrator, left by
the Lesbian who leased the flat, and has an afternoon of joy
that is well described by the title Better than Chocolate.
The sex scenes involve the two female leads can only be described
as exemplary sensual lovemaking and stand in considerable
contrast with the rough-and-tumble sex of the two macho gays
in this year's Hard.
Although the main characters are types, as in all films, their
personalities are developed so sensitively that none of the
lead roles is stereotyped, and that is saying a lot for a
film with several Lesbians, a bisexual, a transgendered person,
and even some heterosexuals. Besides the violent Lesbian in
the bathroom, the only annoying characters are men-Tony, the
skinheads (who have homosexual tendencies but are not gay),
and Maggie's father, who reportedly has been having an adulterous
affair with his female business associate for over a year.
MH
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