Reeling Film Festival

by Aileen Keown-Vaux

Loving Annabelle (Dir. Katherine Brooks)
 
I approach every lesbian movie I watch with one fundamental question: Dear God, will any actress sport a Catholic schoolgirl uniform in this feature? Katherine Brooks’ Loving Annabelle answers this hard-hitting question with a resounding “Yes!”
 
Feeling immediately guilty for asking God such a question, I pose another: will this movie give us more to ponder than a hot lesbian in a prep school skirt?  Thankfully, Brooks goes two for two, directing a film that challenges audiences to think beyond a Girls Gone Wild reference point for naughty teenagers and the teachers they seduce.
 
Set in a Los Angeles Catholic school, Loving Annabelle turns a potentially cliché December-May Romance into an intriguing storyline; a movie that is as concerned with trespassing religious and ethical boundaries as it is with the smoldering attraction between Simone and her precociously HOT student Annabelle.

 
Annabelle, the do-no-right lesbian daughter of a prominent California senator, enrolls at Saint Theresa’s after being kicked out her previous school. This is her last opportunity to shape up, or she’ll be shipped out to military school (Sequel!). The brash and sexy teenager may be barely legal, but she’s no innocent waif. Annabelle takes one look at her blonde, statuesque poetry teacher (cough! Sappho! cough! cough!) and the game is on. Annabelle will stop at nothing to win the trust and love of Simone, a woman who must contend with the professional fall-out of this forbidden love and the ghost of relationships past.
 
The chemistry between actresses Diane Gaidry (Simone) and Erin Kelly (Annabelle) is undeniably erotic. Their fiery lust, poetic repartee, and scandalous dream sequences create a slow burn toward the inevitable (ahem) climax. Love is deferred, until the characters, and the audience, can stand it no longer.
 
Inspired by the 1931 German drama Maedchen in Uniform, the “first feature film to be produced with an openly pro-lesbian storyline,” Loving Annabelle, surprises not only with its character’s depth, but its ability to use subtle humor to strike a balance with the dark elements of the narrative. Brooks understands that a serious story does not necessarily have to take itself seriously. This is a Catholic School after all; anything with a rectory and a campus full of teenage girls has comedy potential.
 
Less pre-war Germany, and more Dead Poets Society, Katherine Brooks’ Loving Annabelle is a solid film that promises to entice those who find poetry, Catholicism, and short plaid skirts utterly loveable.