Desert Hearts

In the fifties, Vivian, a literature professor from New York, arrives in Reno for a divorce and takes a room at a ranch guest house. There she meets Cay, who makes sculpture and works in a casino. Every arrangement in Vivian's life begins to come apart, at her own instigation. The film is not interested in tragedy. It is interested in permission: it does not punish the relationship between the two women, does not end it in illness or death, and nobody has to pay for it. Up to then, cinema had done precisely the opposite. The form leans on place: desert, motel rooms, the casino, and the country records of the period. The production story is the film's reason for existing. Donna Deitch found the money not from a studio but from investors she raised herself, holding fundraising parties around the country, selling shares at fifteen thousand dollars each and building a budget of over a million dollars from more than a hundred investors. The largest group of them were lesbians. The source is Jane Rule's novel. Helen Shaver plays Vivian and Patricia Charbonneau plays Cay. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties American independents and period love stories. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The film is calm and keeps its dramatic conflict deliberately low.