GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

DECEMBER 8, 1995

Evenings Out

Beware of those cus performers

Camille leaves her orderly, religious life fara new world-and the most sensuous lesbian love scene yet on film

Camille (Pascale Bussieres) and Petra (Rachel Crawford) steal a kiss at the front door.

by Doreen Cudnik

When Night is Falling, a new film by writer and director Patricia Rozema, is one of the most sensual and visually sumptuous lesbian love films to date. The film is Rozema's third feature film-following the commercial hit I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and the innovative, brooding White Room.

The story revolves around Camille (Pascale Bussières), a beautiful young professor at a Protestant college, who seems to have her life very well-ordered and mapped out. Her fiancé Martin (Henry Czerny) is also a professor at the New College of Faith, and on the fast track to becoming a star in the theological world. As "career Christians," they are urged to get married and become co-chaplains of the college.

But a vague sense of doubt about her relationship with Martin and her life in general nags at her, and when her beloved dog Bob dies, she begins to unravel.

Her safe, ordered life takes an unexpected turn while in a laundromat the same day. While crying over Bob's death and waiting for her clothes to dry, Camille is approached by an unconventional young woman who offers her comfort. Petra (Rachael Crawford) turns out to be a circus performer, in town with the avante-garde Sirkus of Sorts, whose motto is

Director Patricia Rozema

"Stranger than fiction, truer than fact . . ."

After discovering a mix-up with the laundry, Camille seeks out Petra to return her clothing and retrieve her own, but not after wearing one of Petra's blouses to a meeting with Martin and the dean of the college to discuss the chaplain position. Her unconventional choice of attire for the meeting with the conservative Reverend DeBoer makes Martin all too uncomfortable, although privately you can see that he is turned on by Camille's playful departure from her usually rigid codes of behavior. Martin may be a Christian theologian, but he's a heterosexual man first, and his passion for Camille is unmistakable.

When Camille finds Petra and the circus, thanks to a business card conspicuously dropped in the laundry bag, she enters a world like none she's ever experienced before. Back in her trailer, Petra flirts brazenly with Camille, and Camille reacts the only way she knows howby pulling away. Like the good girl she has been trained to be, Camille makes sure that Petra understands that her sexual advances are unwelcome, that she is "not like that." But she can't quite bring herself to write this woman off, so she tells Petra there is no reason why they can't be friends.

As Camille's friendship with Petra blossoms, so do her fantasies. For the first time in her proper, intellectual life, Camille's desire comes rushing forward. She is shocked and

confused to find that she is infatuated with Petra. Soon, she believes that she is in love. All of this takes place while Martin is conveniently out of town speaking at a religious convention. What ensues is a hypnotic dance of desire which culminates in a magnificent love scene between the two women that is both hot and poignant at the same time. The women are stunningly beautiful as they wind their bodies around each other in a sensual ballet rivaled only by the trapeze artists practicing a routine above them. Petra, with her mocha-colored darker complexion and the fair-skinned Camille are breathtaking as they make love on a makeshift bed covered by a red velvet curtain. (This scene earned the film an NC-17 rating, although it was eventually released unrated after an unsuccessful appeal by the film's distributor.) Camille is faced with questions she has never had to face before, and the choices she eventually has to make— choices we can all identify with-are the crux of the film.

In an interview last January with Regine Schmid, director Rozema talked about how religious faith and love are somehow similar. "Love is a kind of faith we have in someone else," she said. "Everyone who aligns themselves with some kind of school of thought or belief ends up being dependent on it, and has a terrible, wrenching difficulty removing themselves from it. Because their whole lives, their livelihoods and all of their past achievments are tied to that belief, change becomes enormously painful. Change, I think, is tremendously difficult for most people anyway. This film is about finding that courage to make change."

The film is currently playing at the Cedar-Lee Theatre in Cleveland, and will be coming soon to the Drexel Theatres in Columbus; call 614-231-1050 for information.