From the Archives: Unshelter Me
The body electric in Maria Maggenti’s 'The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love'
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰ ½
Romance ✰✰✰✰½
Sex ✰✰✰
Storytelling ✰½
Laurel Holloman’s Performance ✰✰✰✰
Performance (Everyone else) ✰✰
Yearning ✰✰✰✰½
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Written by Meg Heim
I think Maria Maggenti and I both understand something–and that is how gay it is to drive around in a big ol’ car. Of course, if you were gay in high school and driving your mom’s old 2007 Honda Accord, don’t worry. That’s gay too. But I will take a strong stance here: it is canonically gay to drive around, flirt in, and fall in love in big honking cars. It is what we are meant to do. And I’m not just basing this off of my beautiful 2004 Toyota 4Runner V81 that I named Tom, drove from 2011-2016, and made out with my first girlfriend in at stoplights. This just in—breaking news2—Ali also drove a 4Runner in high school and held hands with her first girlfriend over the gear shift. The data doesn’t lie.
Despite knowing that they’re evil and cars are evil in general and we’re just slowly but surely decimating our one Earthly home with pollution and fossil fuels, I do love them–especially the big ones. (I know that this is something I need to confront and I will, eventually! Maybe!) There is queerness inherent in a big car. It doesn’t get more masc than grabbing that little handle while you hoist yourself up into the driver’s seat. There’s also the escapist freedom that you experience when you’re driving alone—you’re in your own personal movie montage. The freedom from observation lets you shrug off the pretenses of your life. If you want to scream along to Vroom Vroom by Charli XCX at the top of your lungs, no one's going to stop you. It’s a cliche, but operating a moving vehicle is sexy!
Maria Maggenti’s The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) features Randy Dean (played by a young, captivating, butch Laurel Holloman aka Tina from The L Word3), a good natured but scrappy lesbian in her senior year of high school. Within the first few minutes of the movie, you’re entrenched in the rich gayness of Randy’s life: lesbian aunts, rollerblades, Leonardo DiCaprio haircuts and sunburned shoulders. Randy lives in a queer household that embodies a shared chaotically warm and lovingly messy family life. When they all sit down to dinner, it's like an exercise in out-talking each other—they clamor about whether or not rice has protein, can you pass the organic pasta, and pause to toast each other every night with the stern Aunt Rebecca’s (Kate Stafford) go to: “We made it through another day”. If you’ve ever been over to your crunchy friend’s house and been like, whoa, this is cool but also a little bit filthy, my Tevas have nothing on you huh, that is the ethos of the production design. My favorite detail is the open jar of peanut butter on the table accompanying their pasta dinner.
When Randy isn’t slouching around at school with her gay bestie Frank (Nelson Rodríguez), she is working part-time at the old gas station in town. It’s a little unclear, but it seems like she does some minor car repairs and also pumps gas (we never actually see her do either of these things). She works here with Regina, played by the inimitable character actress Dale Dickey–this was her big screen debut! (You may also recognize Dickey from another TY favorite; she plays the stalwart Beverly in Amazon’s reboot of A League of Their Own!) Randy’s meet cute happens when a popular girl from school, Evie, pulls into the gas station positively frantic about something being wrong with her back tire. Randy plays the consummate confident dyke, and, even though the tire does not need air, pretends to add some. Evie (Nicole Ari Parker, also in her first major feature film) is anxious and sweet, and flirtatiously promises to catch up with Randy at school4.
So we have our premise—this is a story about two girls falling in love. I think Holloman and Parker play these parts so beautifully; their budding romance builds slowly and intentionally throughout the movie in a way that feels very believable. But, sadly, the writing and pacing largely fails to support their love story. An unbelievable amount of strange camera angles and completely random plot points are just… introduced matter-of-factly. Sometimes, the camera doesn’t move for an entire scene, rendering the storytelling static. But the very next beat it might closely track a character’s scurrying feet, for no apparent reason. Questions all around.
Evie’s main issue is that she doesn’t like her boyfriend, Hayjay, and that her posh, overbearing mom loves her too much. Kidding, but the scene where we learn that she and Hayjay are having issues was so poorly written and acted that I thought they were in like, acting class at school for a second (it takes place up against the lockers, shot from an almost 180 degree angle above their heads). But as The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love progresses, almost every interaction that Holloman and Parker have roots you in their love story—the two characters are so different, but their hearts stay open to each other throughout.
To enjoy this movie, you have to accept it for what it is. This requires parsing out the moments when Evie and Randy are falling in love, flirting, and reveling in each other from basically the rest of the script. When you’re in the early stages of a romance, everything is funny. And these actors perfected those first time giggles; all it takes is for one to glance at the other and any awkwardness dissolves into shy, sweet laughter. But the rest of the movie is made up of so many random lines and throwaway bits that just make no sense. It’s honestly all a little bit silly; every heartfelt scene between the two girls is sandwiched between two bizarrely cheesy scenarios. A favorite of mine is in the school bathroom, when bad girl Randy offers Evie a cigarette (hot, Blue is the Warmest Color, cigarettes as a euphemism, etc etc), who turns it down: “No, thanks. Choir.” To which Randy responds: “I hope this secondary smoke doesn’t ruin your career.” ??
But nevertheless, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love has a mid 90’s joie-de-vivre and charm that offsets how low budget and generally ramshackle it is. In one of the best scenes, Randy and Evie are sitting across from each other; that inkling feeling to take the first step over the line of friendship hovers between the two of them. Randy says shyly, “I really wanna hold your hand right now”. Evie is down! But Randy half-scoffs, telling her how sheltered she is for being unconcerned for their safety. Instead of getting defensive or escalating, Evie just says calmly, “Well…unshelter me”.
Nicole Ari Parker is so deeply serious in everything she says in this movie. This style doesn’t always work; when the writing is a bit out of the box, or you can tell that Maggenti was asking for big emotions from her, it reads a bit funky and aloof. But for the most part, she brings an earnest intensity that plays beautifully against Holloman’s loose, masculine playfulness. Butch Laurel Holloman is so hot in this!5 She is charming while kicking tires, making out with married women, and chanting, “I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!” while she rolls off her bed. I think it's special and worth noting that this movie was Laurel’s first major role and put her on the map. Tina who!!
Despite its messiness, there are so many things that this film does right. The two relish in moments of furtive affection as they feel their way through their first queer love affair6. I was squealing over this tiny moment when Randy walks Evie to her kitchen table for dinner with her family and the camera just catches them holding hands before they let go and sit down to eat. It’s so sweet!!
I was marveling at how these moments of subtlety could shine through amidst so many melodramatic and confusing editing choices (like randomly adding reverb to an authority figure’s lines for a menacing effect) but they do. Their first kiss scene gave me butterflies. Their chemistry in this moment is so perfect and authentic; first tentative and unsure, then more confident, and eventually giggling and giddy. It’s gay high school heaven. Randy takes her gum out, Evie does the same. Randy marries the two pieces without hesitation and tosses them away into the bushes. Evie wrinkles her nose and laughs and it's sublimely sapphic.
Not to bring it back around to SUVs, but I’d argue that Evie’s Range Rover is kind of a third main character in this movie. Take a shot every time someone compliments her on this freakin’ car. But seriously, it reminded me so much of high school—when sitting in the car with my crush at the end of a driveway meant savoring those last few moments before I had to get out and be a (semi-closeted) teenager again. There’s also some really fun, dreamy budget CMBYN energy, where they’re sitting in a field with the Range Rover, reading Walt Whitman to each other and generally frolicking in the grasses.
I also really enjoyed the moments where you can clearly tell that this movie was written by a deeply therapized woman. Highlights for me include when Evie comes out to her three popular besties, and one says, clearly annoyed, “How am I supposed to process this?” I want to be her. Every so often, one of these 1995 high schoolers will comment on the importance of their developmental stages or rail against their codependent, ‘symbiotic’ relationships with their mothers. Then, in the next moment, they’re slamming down pay phones or talking about butts. It’s everything to me.
Aside from the confusing bits, there are some moments of real comedy. The back half of the movie spoofs a crime show, with four stressed out parental figures aggressively questioning gay bestie Frank on Randy and Evie’s whereabouts. Randy’s ex lover, the Married Woman Wendy, returns again and again to cause mayhem in a campified impression of Susan Sarandon. Despite Evie’s popular friends telling her she is lame for coming out, one of them seems a little bicurious and is reading Rubyfruit Jungle aloud to the other two in one of the last scenes of the movie.
The script of The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is pretty rough, in particular for the supporting cast. There are a lot of questionable blocking choices that made me wonder how many location permits they actually had. But I think this, alongside the love story, actually won me over. Queer relationships in high school aren’t “well-written”! I know I’m reaching here, but just trying to say–there’s a charming authenticity to this mess. If you can forgive these blips, enjoy the energy of the story, and appreciate Laurel Holloman being called a ‘Diesel Dyke’, then I think it's well worth the watch.
P.S.—leaving you with Maggie’s dedication at the end to her ex GF. Relatable! I will be writing and rewriting my first lesbian love affair in perpetuity.
You can find rental options for The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love here.
A little bit of Monica in my life! Next week, Ali will gush over Trace Lysette with a review of Andrea Pallaoro’s movie Monica.
The V8 engine was, naturally, so that the car was able to safely pull the horse trailer
We actually didn’t know this about each other until last night
Sometimes you see little moments of Tina JUMP out at you in this movie
Parker’s resume is miles long, but if you’re caught up with the entire SATC cinematic universe, you may recognize her as Charlotte’s devastating friend crush, Lisa Todd Wexley
To me! Ali disagrees 🤨 Drag her in the comments!
Randy doesn’t seem to count her Older Married Woman, Wendy, and neither will I!