I’m asexual, nonbinary, and generally queer. My favorite summation of queerness comes from bell hooks: “Queer’ not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
I started to realize I was queer in late 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. I took a serious look at my conception of gender about a year later, in the spring of 2021. I mention this to say that the timing of my queer awakening has been less than ideal. Spring 2020 was when J.K. Rowling published that article thing that really kicked off her serious TERF era. The failed Republican efforts in the 2020 election intensified such sentiment. The last two years have been a brutal, full-throated assault on trans rights.
If you take nothing else away from this guide, make sure it’s this: however you identify, trans people need you to be as mad as they are about the attack on trans rights; this is the level of allyship needed at this point in queer history.
And because the last few years—i.e. all the time since I realized I was queer—have been brutal, queer media has been a life-saver. There’s more excellent queer representation now than ever before, so here is a four-part guide to the stuff that I find the most interesting, life-giving, and worthwhile in the areas of film, television, books, and music (you can link things here). It’s not meant to be an exhaustive survey, just some of the queer art that I wish more people knew about.
I’ll start with a plug for Kyle Turner’s just-released The Queer Film Guide. He surveys 100 great LGBTQIA+ movies giving brief thoughts on each. It’s a film guide that also feels like a lush coffee table book. A must-have. Much of what I’m hoping to watch this June was prompted by it.
As you probably know queer film is a very broad category contributing to every genre and every era of film history. Many of the most interesting entries in the queer film canon are even things like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks, 1953), which is more queer and queer-coded than a lot of later, more direct films. Queer film is both direct—this character is gay—and a matter of feelings and vibes, allowing for a very wide range of film incapsulating a wide range of what it means to be queer.
I organized this section of the guide around different aspects of the LGBTQIA+ identity while trying to cover as much ground as possible. More than anything this list is personal, reflecting my relationship to queerness in media consumed. I’ve included where you can find them for easy Pride Month streaming, where applicable.
Lesbian
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma, 2019, Hulu/Kanopy)
This is an obvious pick because it is an essential pick. Nothing in recent memory has so perfectly captured the patriarchy-disrupting power that sapphic love has. It also happens to be an incredible movie (and one of three Sciamma titles in this guide).
Saving Face (Wu, 2004, Prime Video) and The Half of It (Wu, 2020, Netflix)
I had to include both of these films from Alice Wu as they are both absolutely delightful. Saving Face combines queer love with themes of family and racial identity to create a deeply resonant, and funny, movie. The Half of It puts a queer spin on Cyrano de Bergerac while being, frankly, a movie that’s too good for Netflix. It’s mostly been lost in the shuffle, because there are so many similar-seeming teen romcoms that are not good, and that is a shame because I think it’s among the most enjoyable movies Netflix has ever made.
Go Fish (Rose Troche, 1994, Tubi) and The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996, Showtime/Kanopy)
These are two fairly different movies but they both belong to the New Queer Cinema wave of the American 1990s. The Watermelon Woman has garnered some attention in recent years as an excellent example of Black identity intersecting with lesbian identity in the context of the mid 90s. Go Fish, which almost feels like a grungy lesbian When Harry Met Sally (Reiner, 1989), is a wonderful slice of 90s indie aesthetic in a snappy and likeable package. A highly underrated film, in my opinion.
Gay
I’ll admit, I haven’t seen as many movies that center queer men, so this is definitely not the best list you’ll find out there. It’s definitely a queer film blind spot of mine and one that I will keep addressing when I have the chance.
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005, Peacock)
When I watched this a couple years ago I was kind of amazed that it deserved the hype while also being a lot less explicit than I had expected. It’s very much a film about the pressures of heteronormative masculinity and how such a system’s rejection of male intimacy is toxic. It should have won Best Picture, and is a must watch for anyone.
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021, Netflix)
Campion’s first entry on the list, this one is similar to Brokeback Mountain in its framing of queer love in opposition to toxic masculinity. Some gay film critics have critiqued aspects of the thematic portrayal, so I would encourage you to search out their perspective, too, but I found it largely effective.
Bros (Nicholas Stoller, 2022, Prime Video) and Fire Island (Andrew Ahn, 2022, Hulu)
Bros did not work for everyone, but it really worked for me. It’s nothing more and nothing less than a very gay version of a comedy movie circa 2008. I am extremely the audience for that, and I loved every bit of it (I’ll probably give it a rewatch this month). I also want to shout out Fire Island, a delightful gay retelling of Pride and Prejudice that kind of slid under the radar last summer. It’s more romcom than hard-R comedy, which left me slightly disappointed, but it’s a great movie all the same.
Bisexual / Pansexual
Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
I could have put Cabaret in several places on this list as the relationship dynamic here is queer in a few different directions. The internet seems to most often clasifys it as a bisexual film, and there aren’t a ton of them, so I’ll put it here. It’s a brilliant film about queer identity in opposition to fascist ideology, sadly a topic more relevant now than it’s been in a long time. Check out the book it’s based on, Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, too.
Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001, AMC+)
This is an amazing coming-of-age tale, equal parts sensitive and erotic. The stars—Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna—have gone on to be big stars, so that’s cool, too. But yeah, I think this movie is just about perfect when it comes to queer film.
Every Day (Michael Sucsy, 2018)
Last week was Pansexual Visibility Day, so I Googled to find a movie to watch and found that there are VERY few movies featuring pansexual characters (this despite the fact that it’s a common identification in the queer community). But one of them is this movie. I watched it and it is a delight. It concerns a girl falling in love with a spirit/essence called A that appears in a new body each day. It’s a mix of The Half of It and About Time (Curtis, 2013), and a good movie about the challenges and precious nature of queer love. I really liked it a lot.
Transgender and Nonbinary
Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011, Criterion Channel)
The second entry from Sciamma, this is an excellent look at childhood from the perspective of a young transmasc individual. This month it’s part of a groundbreaking collection on the Criterion Channel called Masc highlighting 10 feature films and several short films that explore masc identities. Tomboy is the only one of this collection I’ve seen so far, but I’m hoping to watch a lot of them soon. It’s really incredible that they’re doing something like this. There’s also Cowboys (Anna Kerrigan, 2020, Hulu/Kanopy) that’s also in the category, and that I also need to see.
Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)
Since I figure most people reading this have seen this one—it’s sort Queer Film 101 in my mind—allow me a moment to talk about its place in my life. I saw this back in the mid-2010s at least 5 or 6 years before I would have the courage to see my queer self. Something about it, and the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (not the movie version), resonated with me long before I could remotely begin to name why. It’s a powerful, energetic, fun, silly, and campy movie that really is the essence of queer joy in a 90-minute package.
Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021, Hulu)
The big winner at Cannes two years ago, the Oscars was unable to handle this gonzo chaos explosion of a movie. I mean, a character being more or less pregnant with a car is probably not the weirdest this movie gets. It’s a film full of gender play and queer ideas of between-ness. It’s also one of the best movies of the 2020s so far, at least for a certain kind of viewer (me!). Ducournau also made an excellent queer cannibalism movie called Raw (2016) that you also should watch.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun, 2022, Max/Kanopy)
I ranked this high on my list of favorite 2022 movies, and I’ll probably keep singing its praises at every turn. As a nonbinary person, this unsettled the core of my being in a way few films ever have. There is a peculiar anxiety to queer life, especially as it relates to online spaces, and this movie gets it.
Queer
This is a catchall category for movies that are definitely queer but that also don’t, in my opinion, fit very neatly in the other categories.
Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino, 2022)
You might have expected to see his other film, Call Me By Your Name (2017), earlier on the list, but I actually don’t like that movie very much. I much prefer this far more ignored effort from last year that just is queer. All of it. The characters, the anxieties, the vibe and tone. It just is in a way that I really can’t fully explain. But you should definitely watch it.
Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman, 2021, Max/Kanopy)
One could have this in the bisexual category, as Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is definitely bi, but I put it in this category because this movie is just so queer. It captures one particular feeling that queer people know so well: the idea that you have a secret and that, at any moment, this secret could explode and upend your life. The director’s follow-up, Bottoms, is due out at the end of August and will likely be among my favorite movies of this year.
Petite Maman (Sciamma, 2021, Hulu)
I don’t really want to explain this one because to do so would also be to slightly spoil the magic of a perfect movie, so I’ll just say that, as in Tomboy, there’s a tinge of queer childhood reality present in what is this time a very different context. I definitely believe it should be here, and so it is.
I’ve got a Pride Month watchlist for myself, too. I’ve been on a deep and prolonged 90s kick, so I’m hoping to check off some films from Turner’s film guide. This includes a few from Todd Haynes (Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine) and some staples like My Own Private Idaho and High Art. I’m also hoping to watch Farewell My Concubine, The Wedding Banquet, The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, Show Me Love, and Chocolate Babies. As noted above, there is also the Masc collection on Criterion Channel. They’re also streaming a trio of films from Gregg Araki and a bunch of other queer films. The Criterion Channel has an impeccable lineup of queer options year round, so we’ll see which ones I get to this month. And I’m sure I’ll have thoughts to share at the end of the month.
But I also have more thoughts now, because this was only one of four Pride Month Primers. So click here for my TV picks, here for some book recommendations, and here for some essential (and often deeply unsettling) music suggestions. Happy watching!
