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10 Awesome Films That Feature Lesbian/Bi Women of Color

I don’t know about you but I’ve seen a lot of lists of ‘best lesbian films’ or ‘films about bi women that you must see’ which are (almost) entirely comprised of films about white women. Don’t get me wrong- those films are great- but if we don’t also talk about the films that focus on lesbians and bi women of color, we are missing out on some major talent.

Fiona: As an artist, not working in either a corporate environment or an environment where I have to work with other people makes it easier for me to be who I am. I don’t have to say, “oh I have to balance being a woman, with being black, with being queer, with being an immigrant. I’m just all those things all the time.”

This incredible feature length documentary shares the lives and views from various black lesbians on their sexuality, media representation, patriarchy, homophobia, and activism; inspiring honest and progressive conversations and highlighting how black lesbians are viewed, ignored, and affected by society.

Director Tiona McClodden had conversations with almost 50 out, black, lesbians including Filmmaker/Activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Hip-Hop Duo KIN, and Author Fiona Zedde.

New Line Cinema

Cleo: That’s what we need to do, rob a bank.

Stoney: That’s stupid; ain’t nobody over here gonna be robbing no bank.

Cleo: We’re gonna end up dead anyway.

This film centers around Cleopatra ‘Cleo’ Sims (Queen Latifah), and her friends Stoney (Jada Pinkett Smith), Frankie (Vivica A. Fox) and T.T (Kimberly Elise) as they plot to go on a bank-robbing spree for four very different reasons. What starts off as a crazy ‘what if’, quickly escalates into murder.

Will they get caught? Whose life is in danger? Will any of them escape?

I Can’t Think Straight

Layla: Have you ever done this before?

Tala: Slept with a woman while my fiancé makes wedding preparations?

This beautiful film features a Palestinian woman, Tala (Lisa Ray), who is currently on her fourth engagement to a man (for some reason the first three just didn’t stick) when she meets her best friend’s girlfriend and emerging writer Layla (Sheetal Sheth).

The two begin an affair and Tala begins to question her sexuality (you see what I mean about those past engagements not working out) but Layla ends the relationship after Tala messes up. Will they end up together or will convention force them apart?

Frida (Amazon Prime)

Tina: Whoever takes the biggest swig [of Tequila] can dance with me.

Frida:  *swigs* Shall we?

This biopic of bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) explores Frida’s life and loves against the political and cultural backdrop of the early 20th Century. Although much of the movie does focus on her dysfunctional relationship with fellow artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), we do get glimpses of her affairs with lady loves, like Tina (Ashley Judd).

Circumstance (Netflix Canada)

Atefeh: I can’t do this anymore.

Shirin: Nothing has changed. I love you.

This heartbreaking drama tells the story of how hard it is to be LGBT under the Iranian Regime. It’s the story of Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri), a rich teen, and her girlfriend Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), an orphan, who love partying and experimenting with drink and drugs (despite the fact that Atafeh’s brother Mehran’s (Reza Sixo Safai) is an ex-addict).

As the girls grow closer, Atafeh’s family tries to tear them apart and Mehran becomes increasingly religious and becomes obsessed with Shireen.

This movie is actually based on the experiences of director/writer Maryam Keshavarz who grew up in Iran. Because the film dealt with a lesbian storyline, fake scripts sent to the Lebanese authorities and the actors had to accept that they may not be able to see their families after the release. That’s pretty heartbreaking in itself.

Stud Life (Amazon Prime)

JJ: You don’t like Elle, do you? You can’t stand to see me with somebody.

Seb: She’s not right for you.

This British indie film focuses on stud lesbian, JJ (T’Nia Miller), and her gay best friend, Seb (Kyle Treslove), whose friendship is tested when she falls for the beautiful diva, Elle (Robyn Kerr). Will JJ be forced to choose between an old friend and a new love? Or can this be worked out?

The Watermelon Women

Cheryl: I’ve [watched] all these films from the 30s and 40s with black actresses in them, like Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers and in some of these films, the black actresses aren’t even listed in the credits and I was just totally shocked by that.

I will admit that I find the title of this movie troubling but stay with me here.

This movie follows Cheryl (Cheryl Dunye) a young black filmmaker who works at a video store (if you’re under 18, video stores are like a brick and mortar Netflix) with her friend Tamara (Valarie Walker).

Cheryl watches several films from the 1930s and 1940s and notices that the black actresses in them were not credited (which is typical of the time period). After seeing one particular film in which a Mammy-style character is billed in the credits only as The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl sets out to find out more about the actress and create a documentary about her life.

While working on the documentary, Cheryl meets and falls for Diana (Guinevere Turner), who Tamara dislikes. Then Tamara accuses Cheryl of wanting to be white and Diana, who is white, of having a fetish for black people.

Will Cheryl track down the actress? Will Tamara split Cheryl and Diana up?

Pariah (Netflix)

Focus Features

Alike: I am not broken, I am free.

This is the story of 17-year-old Alike (Adepero Oduye), a butch lesbian who is exploring her sexuality, deciding to dress androgynously, and falling in love for the first time, with femme Bina (Aasha Davis).

Upon coming out, Alike faces violence from her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), who cannot accept her daughter and wants her to act ‘feminine’ and be straight. Alike has a choice to make; should she attempt to gain her mother’s approval or leave early for college?

Bessie

Bessie: I ain’t playing second to nobody!

This HBO biopic about bisexual blues singer Bessie Smith (the second entry for Queen Latifah on this list) is truly one for the ages.

It certainly doesn’t shy away from depicting the racism that Bessie was subjected to throughout her life, from vaudeville producers who refused to feature dark-skinned black women in their shows to the attitudes of rich white guests but it is interspersed with tender moments featuring her lover Lucille (Tika Sumpter) and uplifting scenes Ma Rainey (Mo’Nique) taking Bessie under her wings.

In what might be the most epic moment of the movie, Bessie chases off the KKK who attempt to attack her during a show.

The Women of Brewster Place (Netflix)

Theresa: Lorraine, you are a lesbian. A dyke, a lesbo, a butch, all those names that boy was calling you. Yes, I saw it! And you can run in all the basements in the world, and it’s not gonna change anything. Why can’t you just accept it?

Lorraine: I have accepted it! I’ve accepted it all my life! I lost my family because of that, but it doesn’t make me different than anybody else in this world!

This 1989 made-for-TV movie, based on the novel of the same name by Gloria Naylor, tells the story of several black women who live in a rundown housing project.

Lorraine (Lonette McKee) and Theresa (Paula Kelly) are a lesbian couple who fled suburbia due to their sexuality but find that homophobia is just as much of a problem in the city. Although they are not the main characters, their role was ground-breaking at the time.

Bonus: This movie was produced by and stars Oprah Winfrey.

This is absolutely not a complete list and I would love to see your suggestions in the comments for other films about lesbians or bi women of color that you’ve particularly enjoyed so that we can all increase our catalogue of fantastic films.

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Film Review: “I Care A Lot”

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This time our villainess has dispensed with The Cool Girl and has picked up a different stereotype of femininity — The Carer. Men can’t see through her nurturing exterior. She’s a sociopath, but in a professional, polished package, so you’d never expect it.

Marla Grayson acts as a legal guardian to seniors, making financial and medical decisions for those whose family’s can’t help. But Marla is actually scamming these wards of the state, putting them in expensive care homes, flipping their houses and selling their estates, alongside Fran, her investigator/analyst/fixer girlfriend.

So this is a comedy?

When the set up is as tasteless as a dead baby joke, as J Blakeson’s film is, some people are just not going to want to stick around for the punchline. That’s how I felt anyway, trying to sit still for a story where the protagonist is a grifting, exploitative elder abuser. Am I too sensitive? Because I feel like senior abuse in our extremely broken health care system is too real to be humorous.

It wasn’t until a third of the way through a disturbingly sociopathic film, whose attempts at irony or satire fell just short of actually forcing a smile or a laugh, that the film’s humor finally broke through.

Peter Dinklage shows up playing a mysterious mob boss, a little bit unhinged and universally threatening if things don’t go according to his plan. His incompetent henchmen provide a bit of madcap comic relief. Chris Messina enters as a verbose and eloquent Saul Goodman-type, but out of a Coen Brothers script. OK, you’ve worn me down, Blakeson. I will ride with your dead-baby-joke-level script.

With time, the unlikeable and repulsive Marla becomes more watchable. It helps that the chemistry between Marla and her blisteringly hot business partner and girlfriend Fran is believable.

Marla and Fran

Like Gone Girl, I Care a Lot is preoccupied with gender roles and sexual politics. The hyper-feminine carer/nurturer at the center of I Care a Lot begs the question: how can femininity effectively obscure violence, exploitation and ambition? Gender roles and stereotypes like docility, a caring nature, an instinct to nurture, which are forcibly put on women as a class, can actually be exploited for the power and profit of the individual woman. Male violence on full display in society creates a diversion that allows the female sociopath to lurk, stalk and loot in plain sight.

In I Care a Lot, Roman Lunyov’s weakness (loving his mom) would traditionally be coded as feminine. To protect her, he asserts a real burn-it-all-down type of masculine power: kidnapping, torture, (attempted) murder. Marla is his opposite. She loves nothing so much as power. She wants money even at the cost of love. Her counterattacks go through the courts, through the hospital system. She’s sly and flying under the radar as best as she can. 

Marla’s insistence on moving forward with her plans for domination in the guardianship field, in spite of the promise of violence, is relatable to any woman who has resisted sexual grooming, intimidation, and even threats from chauvinists. That’s going to include a lot of straight women too, but lesbians, faced with ‘you just haven’t found the right man,’ or ‘you could really use a good d*ck to turn you straight,” are going to find some catharsis in Marla’s stubbornness and fearlessness.

I CARE A LOT (2021) Rosamund Pike as Marla. Cr: Seacia Pavao/NETFLIX

Some kind of Third Wave Feminism

As a lesbian, the central character, is also a symbol of the rejection of, even a resistance to, male power. Lesbianism is a boundary. It’s a hard stop, a wall. It centers women in a world where maleness and masculinity are the standard, the norm, the axis of power around which everything else is believed to orbit. And Marla is her own axis of power, refusing to bend to gangsters, administrators, or the law. She’s a product of third-wave feminism — a woman amassing power by any means, just as men do.

Comparisons to Gone Girl in my own review and in countless others that you’ll encounter this week is not fair to Rosamund Pike, who has in fact made more than one movie. Her range is not limited to blonde-bobbed sociopaths who break the fourth wall to offer their own armchair feminist philosophy. But you’re going to keep seeing those comparisons because Gone Girl is essentially a perfect psychological thriller and a deep read on gender roles and sexual politics, a combo that I Care a Lot is also aiming for.

That instant and unavoidable comparison creates one of the film’s biggest stumbling blocks.

Remember how, shortly after the smash hit A Quiet Place had audiences (specifically me) screaming with its combination of alien invasion/creature feature/plague horror, Netflix took all these elements and made their own (seemingly knock-off) alien/creature/plague apocalypse horror? Where in A Quiet Place, the creatures were triggered by sound, and deafness proved to be an advantage that saved the day and pointed to a brighter tomorrow, in Bird Box it was sight, and blindness was the key to a brighter tomorrow. 

It almost seemed like Netflix had written, produced and cast the film by algorithm, swapping out successful elements of a blockbuster to create a data-driven small screen success. In fact, Bird Box was adapted from a novel, but its similarities to A Quiet Place, along with the timing and hype around its release, led to audiences feeling let down. 

Well, I Care A Lot feels real algorithm-y. It brings to mind Rosamund Pike’s iconic turn as Amy Dunne, sure, but also Maniac (which was produced by algorithm) and Ryan Murphy’s recent Netflix vehicles, with their escalating camp and color blocking. 

Amy Dunne was not a likeable villain. She was nasty, unstoppably evil, and her femininity was a super power that allowed her to pull off airtight crimes, just like our Marla. 

Although she was unlikeable, it’s exciting to root for her and Nick in the end. He’s trash, she’s trash, they’re perfect for each other. In a sick way, these characters lose and win in equal measure in the battle for their marriage. The thriller twists into a very gothic romance, and who doesn’t want soul mates to stay together?

That sentiment, of rooting for evil to meet its match, is what’s missing from I Care a Lot. The ending pulls the remaining loose ends in the story together to try and tie them up, but it doesn’t work, or at least for me it didn’t, because the justice served is cheap and shallow. Lunyov doesn’t get a comeuppance on par with Marla’s and Fran’s. And unlike Nick and Amy Dunne’s ending, you can’t turn this one over and over in your mind for hours or days after it’s over, considering all the demented and disturbing outcomes for these characters. 

After much resistance, J Blakeson’s film had finally worn me down. If I wasn’t rooting for the evil assholes, at least I wanted to find out what happens to them next. But in the end, caring a little was not rewarded by I Care a Lot.