ABSTRACT
In Hollyood cinema, classic and modem, lesbianism has either been marginalized or has remained the repressed underside of heterosexual romance. A popular Freudian conception of female sexual development continues to underpin dominant representations of lesbianism. In her journey to maturity, the girl must transfer her affections from her first love, her mother, to her father—a process which, Freud acknowledged, was fraught with difficulties. Lea Pool’s feature Anne Trister (1986), one of a number of films with lesbian themes funded by the Film Board of Canada in recent years, questions this phallocentric model of female sexuality and reframes, rather than disavows, the protagonist’s primary bond with the mother.
