Review: Imagine Me and You

Imagine Me and You
(warning: contains spoilers)

Rendering lesbians on film is always problematic. When a minority group scrambles for any positive media attention you're never going to satisfy everyone nor get an across-the-board representation of every face in that sub-culture. Take the criticism levelled at 'The L Word'. There was much debate when the series first emerged in regards to it presenting only a certain type of lesbian- an affluent white city femme living in a lesbian utopia. The writers defended themselves against this accusation by stating it was neither their intention nor responsibility to represent the entire lesbian community of the United States of America. It's also unlikely that a series about butch dykes going to pot-lucks in the country would rate very highly outside my living room.

Such is the way of Imagine Me and You- the protagonists are two classically beautiful femme well educated white women, the ever-Sapphic Piper Perabo and relative newcomer Lena Headey. Piper plays the same cute spunky but soft archetype in Rachel that we've come to expect from her in roles such as Violet in Coyote Ugly and Nora in Cheaper By the Dozen. Lena's character Luce is the 'butcher' of the two (though that's a lark), the strong confident florist who knows who she is (a lesbian) and what she wants (Piper). Apart from having an almost latent moral dilemma about Piper being a newlywed she sets herself on a straight course- destination Piper's pants.

Piper's Rachel makes a very fast change from someone who looks to have never questioned her hetero sexual orientation before to someone who is prepared to sacrifice her new marriage for a kind of relationship we'll assume she's never thought about before (or it's wider reaching implications). The writers attempt half-heartedly to set us up to accept this unlikelihood by including a revealing dinner conversation over which the characters wax lyrical on the nature of true love (in short, Rachel thinks you 'make do' while Luce believes in love at first sight- naturally).

All in all, Imagine Me and You is a cute film that gives you warm fuzzies if you manage to suspend your disbelief (which film-watching dykes are used to doing). I'd love to go see a mainstream lesbian movie with a diverse cast of fully fleshed out lesbian and bisexual characters, of all sizes and of varied economic status- but I think I've got more chance of raising Sappho from the dead and convincing her to be my girlfriend.

It's just as well I don't speak Greek.