CONVERSION EXPERIENCE.

Forget friendship circles--the classic lesbian story focuses on one woman finding herself in the arms of another

There is no lesbian version of The Boys in the Band, Nor has the friendship circle been a central feature of modern lesbian cinema. Desert Hearts, the breakthrough film of the '80s, had a protagonist who was gorgeous but seemed to be the only dyke in all of Nevada--until she found a divorcee to convert, The conversion story, as falling-in-love or coming-out narrative, has been the formula of choice for lesbian films.

True, there are exceptions. Go Fish had a gang of gals who cheered and chided each other, as did the critically scorned but audience-friendly films Bar Girls and Everything Relative; all of these were marked by the friendships familiar to lesbian viewers. In the case of Go Fish, that was deliberate. "We wanted our lesbians to be ordinary, We didn't want the whole charged-up spectacle that the exclusive focus on two women falling in love provides," director Rose Troche (Go Fish, Bedrooms & Hallways) recalls of her screenplay collaboration with Guinevere Turner, "Of course, that's how lesbians make friends, anyway: Sleep with them first, and friendship follows."

In the conversion story, however, one or both partners discover lesbianism too late in the movie for friendship--typically in the second half, fourth quarter, or final ten minutes. In High Art Syd's tryst with Lucy ends in tragedy instead of friendship, And it's only in the final scene of the German multiracial film Everything Will Be Fine that a runaway bride dives into the water to declare her lesbian love, Lesbian kinship ties may be the stuff of legend offscreen, but you'd never know in from the movies, In All Over Me the lovelorn Claude finds her way to a lesbian rocker (played by the Murmurs' Leisha Hailey) only after a gay man tells her where to go. Its director, Alex Sichel, admits it wasn't always so: "I was originally inspired by the whole riot grrrl scene, It wasn't even a lesbian film! But rewriting was like sharpening a pencil: We wanted to go deeper into this one girl, and we realized she was going to fall in love, With her best friend, And then with another girl."

In the ongoing rewrite of lesbian cinema the lone protagonist continues to go off on her own, or sometimes with just one other woman, to discover love in a world devoid of other lesbians, Why? Are lesbians lonelier? Jennifer Morris, codirector of the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, wonders: "I'm not sure why everyone wants to focus on two people, It's possible that it's economic: Their budget can only afford two main actors. Lesbian filmmakers just don't have the money that gay men do, On the plus side, it takes so long to raise the money that the films are often better written."

Maybe the drama in conversion narratives is more easily rendered, Or maybe it capitalizes on the valorization of coming out as gaydom's central ritual, But that doesn't explain why it's a lesbian-only convention, Rose Troche suspects that reversal is the culprit: that the reality of lesbian friendship circles offscreen is precisely why the films avoid them, "Lesbian films have a stake in presenting lesbians as sexy because we've always been told we're not," Troche argues, "And conversely, gay male films are saying, Hey, we're not just about sex--we have friendships too, Both kinds of films are reactions to prevailing stereotypes."

Advocate columnist Rich is the author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement.