Desert Hearts

Donna Deitch · 1985 · 91 minutes
November 16 · Regal Riviera · 7:45 p.m.

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed professor of literature is unexpectedly seduced by a carefree, spirited young woman.

Programmer’s Note

As critic B. Ruby Rich points out in her excellent essay on Desert Hearts, 1985 proved to be a pivotal year for American independent, regional, and queer cinema. Along with the release of Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche, Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances, and Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985 also saw the invention of the Bechdel Test, Alison Bechdel’s oft-cited rule that “a work of fiction must feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man, and the women must have names.” Needless to say, Desert Hearts passes the test.

A landmark of LGBTQ cinema, Desert Hearts is set in Reno, Nevada at the end of the Eisenhower era — before second wave feminism, before the gay liberation movement, before the backlash conservatism of the Reagan years. The period setting allows us as viewers to enter into a kind of imagined world that is recognizable but also heavy with symbolism. (John Huston’s great western, The Misfits, casts a long shadow here.) By choosing as her source material Jane Rule’s Desert of the Hearts, director Donna Deitch is playing with the iconography of mid-century lesbian pulp novels, in the same way that Todd Haynes would later play with Patricia Highsmith’s prose in Carol (2015).

As the stuffy professor Vivian and the free-spirited Cay, Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau give two of the great performances in the canon of American regional cinema. This is one of those rare films that manages to capture convincingly the experience of two people falling in love. And it’s just a stunning film to look at. Cinematographer Robert Elswit went on to become a frequent collaborator with Paul Thomas Anderson, George Clooney, and Dan and Tony Gilroy.

Desert Hearts has been digitally restored by the Criterion Collection, Janus Films, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Outfest and the Sundance Institute. Funding was provided by the Criterion Collection, Janus Films, the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, and the Sundance Institute.