my favorite lesbian neo noirs
Bound (1996) and The Handmaiden (2016) are both Neo Noirs focused on the execution of a crime where the women are potentially dangerous to each other: they are flawed people, they have reasons to mistrust each other, they have differences between them and conflicting agendas. They could be femme fatales to each other but instead they choose to work together⌠I like that this working together isnât taken as given because of some falsely assumed natural alliance among women but rather because of the recognition and trust they come to as individuals.
Bound is largely about crime as mutual seduction and mutual trust. Deepening intimacy in the face of real reasons to fear that your desires (for sex or money or both) will be used against you, to make a dupe and a fool of you. And thereâs a whole thing about whether Corky, a butch lesbian, will look down on Violet, a femme woman who sleeps with men for various reasons, as somehow polluted or inferior, or recognize her as an equal.
In The Handmaiden, Sookhee and Hideko both spend a fair amount of the story deceiving and planning to destroy each other for their own benefit. Sookhee has her poverty and class status and her status as a Korean woman under Japanese occupation to count against Hideko; Hideko has lived a life that, since her aunt died, has featured female figures who either actively participate in or passively ignore her abuse at her uncleâs hands.
Hideko, for her part, has found one of her only satisfactions in life is tormenting her Korean maids and her uncleâs first wife. Sometimes she hits them. One time, she hits Sookhee.
There is a real brokenness inside her and it doesnât simply come from things men have done to her: it comes from the things women have done too and the things sheâs done to them in return.
So, yes, these are Neo Noirs where the women choose to be femme fatales to men but not to each other - but itâs not predicated on a kind of bs narrative about how naturally soft, harmless, and pure women are. How weâre all natural allies of each other. Weâre not: really connecting is hard and there are so many things that divide us, both socially and inside the wreckage of our hearts.
In the most powerful scene of the movie, where Sookhee and Hideko destroy the books Hidekoâs uncle has used in his abuse of her, we are not sold a false line of automatic female unity, but Hidekoâs voice-over says:
âThe daughter of a legendary thief, who sewed winter coats out of stolen purses⌠herself a thief, pickpocket, swindler⌠The savior who [had] came to tear my life apart. My Tamako. My Sookhee.â
She brings up âTamako,â the Japanese maid name Sookhee was supposed to answer to as a Korean servant of a Japanese lady. She talks about their class divisions; she talks about their past attempts to destroy each other. Itâs powerful because it was far more likely that they *would* destroy each other rather than trust and love.
And with Bound too, the final, triumphant words of the story are a reference to their earlier argument about the ways they express their queerness, their differences and how hard it has been to come together and be of one mind about their conspiracy.
Corky: You know what the difference is between me and you, Violet?
In both films, by not falsely assuming all women know how to do is be utterly sweet to each other, by admitting their full, complicated and flawed and sometimes ugly and violent humanity, the unions feels earned and meaningful.
