Review- The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (DVD)

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (DVD)

1995

Contemporary/ Lesbian/ YA

While working part-time at her aunt's gas station, defiant tomboy Randy Dean (Laurel Holloman) falls in love with Evie Roy (Nicole Ari Parker), a rich, straight honor student who's already in a relationship. The two girls navigate the magical and confusing world of young love. Writer-director Maria Maggenti's touching and funny debut won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Independent Film in 1996.

This is such a cute, sweet story about two teenage girls falling in love for the first time. It’s done in realistic, honest, way but doesn’t get serious or heavy. Both actresses did such a great job. For once I believed both women were actually gay or attracted to each other unlike some other films I’ve seen recently.

Randy is a endearing character. She’s a tomboy/butch girl who is basically out in her school. Everyone gossips about her behind her back or even in front of her and she’s basically an outcast. But she does have a gay guy friend and she takes her situation with an ease that’s not typical of kids bullied or teased for being different, which I liked. She accepts who she is and while it does bother her that she’s picked on, she doesn’t let it overwhelm her and even tells people to fuck off. She’s also struggling with many other things in her life. She’s failing in school and might not be able to graduate and she lives with her aunt who’s trying to keep a tight leash on her.

Evie is the complete opposite. She’s one of the cool girls, popular, and has intellectual interests. She listens to classical music and reads poetry and lives with all the creature comforts that being upper middle class offers. You’d think she’d be really happy but she’s struggling. She’s not really feeling it with her boyfriend, who’s actually portrayed as the more emotional of the two, and there are hints that her over-achieving mother puts some pressure on her to be perfect all the time.

Both girls meet when Evie is worried that something’s wrong with her car and pulls into the gas station that Randy’s aunt owns and which Randy works in. Evie recognizes her as a school mate and they chat a bit. In school, they meet up again in the girls bathroom by accident when Randy goes in for a smoke, pissed off that she’s been chastised again by a teacher, and Evie comes in crying after having a spat with her boyfriend. They get detention for smoking and they start to form a friendship from that.

The rest of the movie is basically about their tentative coming together first as friends and then as lovers. It’s very poignant in parts, particularly when Randy confesses that she wants to hold Evie’s hand in a restaurant. Those first moments when things have started shifting in a relationship between two people from a friendship to a budding love is captured so beautifully and innocently.

Of course, there are kinks to this new love story. Randy lives with her aunt, her aunt’s girlfriend and her aunt’s ex-girlfriend who needed a place to stay. So she’s in house of all lesbians, which you’d think would be a good thing. However, they don’t have money, which causes friction. They’re a close knit, expressive group though compared to Evie’s staid home life. Shockingly, Randy’s aunt is not thrilled with this development even though they all know Randy’s a lesbian as well. And she’s pissed off with Randy for letting her grades drop and insists that she stop hanging out with this girl.

And Evie, whom I give a lot of credit to in this story since she has a lot to lose by being courageous and befriending the school outcast, is so open minded if a bit innocently naïve about how her friends will react to this new friendship. It’s not the reaction she thought or hoped for. But she doesn’t let that affect her feelings or desire to stick with Randy, which I thought was admirable.

The only thing about this film that went a bit hokey was the ending. It was a bit over the top, but it also explained a lot more of how and why the girls found themselves attracted to each other, the family dynamics and so on that partially formed who they were as people comes to a head giving the viewer a more intimate view of who the girls are. It was also funny and a sort of typical, gloss over reality for a light--- unrealistic love overcomes all--- American ending.

I definitely recommend this movie. It’s an all-around feel good movie and shows a young, budding lesbian love in a, fun, positive, and non-judgmental way.

Heat Level – 2  There’s some nudity in one sex scene. It’s a gorgeously, sensually choreographed sex scene that doesn’t try to titillate in sexual way as much as in a loving way.

Grade A-