The rise of the queer female gaze

“What do depictions of queer pleasure look like when it’s a woman controlling the narrative?”

Ronit spitting into Esti’s mouth in Disobedience, Odile going down on Nina as she slips into psychosis in Black Swan, Emma and Adèle’s NINE MINUTE LONG sex scene in Blue Is The Warmest Colour. What do these three films have in common, other than being some of the most famous onscreen portrayals of lesbian and bisexual sex? They were all directed by men. They were also all massive cultural moments, with people taking to social media declaring “SPIT IN MY MOUTH”, creating fan art and more.

By the time I was in my mid-teens – not seeing any of the above films until I was a little older – the cishet romances on the big screen had already shaped not