I have to take issue with those who say that this movie is not "about lesbianism".

Yes, it would be simplistic to boil it down to just that. But it's pretty clear that the homoerotic overtones to the girl's relationship and the attitudes towards homosexuality in 60s New Zealand are important aspects of the film.

The girls' relationship is very obviously a love relationship. It isn't just a very close friendship. Everything in the film signals that it is more than that. And while it's debatable whether a love relationship between girls is necessarily lesbian (though most modern lesbians would consider falling in love with other girls the determining factor, not sexual relations), the relationship is consumated as well. There are also strong hints in the film that it wasn't just a game where they are playing the role of the men in their fantasy world either. I.e. Pauline writes in her diary during their last weeks together that they spent the evening "having a fantastic time, in every possible way." Emphasis in tone of voice in the film, not just my emphasis.

Now, I don't think that the two girls necessarily consider themselves gay, or that they are exclusively lesbian, or even would have grown up to be gay. It's just that the relationship obviously has homoerotic aspects to it, and you'd be missing half the film to not recognize that.

However, what's going on is more complex than just a lesbian relationship. You have a friendship between two adolescent girls at the moment when they are first becoming sexually aware, which becomes extremely intense, because of unrecognized and unexplored sexual awakening. That the girls fall in love with eachother does indicate that there's some degree of same-sex attraction, though I personally don't think that is more important than the fact that at that age there's a lot of generalized, undirected sexual energy in teenage girls. Because they were already close friends spending a lot of time together, those awakening feelings ended up getting directed towards eachother, and developing into an intense romantic involvement.

Also, the film pretty clearly shows the discomfort of the parents with the apparant love relationship between their girls, and that their attempts to separate them stemmed directly from homophobia. So it is also commenting on how attitudes towards homosexuality brought about the situation that resulted in Honoria's murder. It is not only exploring a semi-erotic love relationship between two teenage girls, but also delivering an oblique social critque of homophobia.

Considering that Jackson and Walsh's relationship is a "domestic partnership", a form that was established for gay couples, there's a strong probability that they are sympathetic to gay rights, and therefore that message would be in line with their personal beliefs, so it isn't surprising it would be in the film.

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I, Claudius
Tiberius: "Rome deserves you. I'm going to nurse you like a viper in her bosum."
Caligula: "Is that a joke, uncle?"
Tiberius: "Not yet, but it will be."

Well..you have to remember that this was in New Zealand in the 50's. Homosexuality between men was still punishable by imprisonment and lesbianism was 'the love that dare not speak it's name'.
It's not just the parents who are shocked and want to seperate them..the whole of society was like that back then..it simply was not done! You did not have same sex relationships back then..and if you did it was very clandestine. With our contemporary views on homosexuality etc we look back and think how archaic the law was back then..but at the time you simply did not talk about it.

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Well, yeah. The movie is obviously making a point about attitudes towards homosexuality in the 50s. That's why I am saying that it is wrong to suggest that this movie is not about lebianism on any level. There's obviously a lot going on in the movie that comments on it directly or indirectly.

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Recommended.

I, Claudius
Tiberius: "Rome deserves you. I'm going to nurse you like a viper in her bosum."
Caligula: "Is that a joke, uncle?"
Tiberius: "Not yet, but it will be."

Who's said that it wasn't?

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