closeUp

Clearly we want Lesbian Visibility Week to shine a light on every sort of lesbian – so tonight I treated myself to this highly entertaining film about extraterrestrial lesbians. It’s a gorgeous parody of the 1950s black-and-white sci-fi B-movies, but also a confidently lesbian story about love and lust and the different relationships we seek- and a gentle poke of humour at how ridiculous humans are. Three female space aliens are sent to earth to have their hearts broken, as their huge emotions are thought to be depleting their planet’s ozone layer. Two of them form a dangerous attraction to each other, while the third falls for Lisa Haas’s downbeat store clerk. All of them are being watched by a classic odd-couple pair of FBI agents who must ensure the alien presence doesn’t alarm th...

Celebrate the start of Lesbian Visibility Week with Taiwanese film Spider Lilies, an award-winning, delicate examination of desire, loss and hurt, available to watch via Queer East until 2 May. Jade is an 18-year-old web cam model who reconnects with her childhood crush, Takeko, a tattoo artist who is a few years older than her. Both young women are hiding their pain: Jade lives with her grandmother after her mother ran off; Takeko looks after her disabled brother whose memory was lost when their father died in an earthquake. The film takes us on a gentle journey through the young women as they explore their complicated feelings for each other, and whether a childhood crush can translate to adult love, while also examining pain – of being inked, of loss, of familial guilt. It all has...

Australian teenager Sequin (the excellent Conor Leach) enjoys hookups with older men, blocking them immediately after sex and moving on to the next thrill. But during a visit to an anonymous sex party, he finds a guy he wants to see again. Meanwhile he is pursued by a married man (Ed Wightman), keen to see him again, and Sequin tries to manipulate this man’s need to locate the details of the anonymous stranger. This is part a sexy, erotic thriller, and part a coming-of-age story as Sequin navigates his way through sex, desire, the thrill of being desired – as well as school, a shy schoolmate clearly interested in him and his relationship with his dad. Joyously, there is no discomfort in Sequin’s sexuality – either at school or at home – and nor is their any shame in his enjoyment of hoo...