Girl Play
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love knows you love an underdog, and what could be a bigger underdog humor-deprived America than lesbian comic cinema? If Uzbecki interpretive dance is not your answer, perhaps a smart, home-grown love story called Girl Play is.
 
A pack of Your Dearest's friends took the Path into Manhattan on the say-so of our most manly-man friend who'd grown up with one of the movie's stars. It was our good fortune to find ourselves at the Quad on 13th Street on opening weekend, when director Lee Friedlander and stars Lacie Harmon and Robin Greenspan were present and answering questions. The screening room was intimate. The only men in the building who were not dreamily taking tickets came with our party. It could have been an artistic and social disaster in a small, closed community. Instead, the afternoon was a total blast.
 
Girl Play was a play in Los Angeles written by Harmon and Greenspan called Real Girls and it was the story of how Harmon and Greenspan met and fell in love. They meet, they fall, they resist, they break up with other people, they quit resisting. The audience knows this started out as a play because the movie adapts a storytelling motif. Against a brick backdrop, Harmon and Greenspan talk, then a small, poignant story unfolds, back and forth, building to their eventual union. Mostly, the editing is crisp and precise, and the story moves along at a very pleasant clip. The sexy scenes are white hot. At the screening we attended a short reel of bloopers showed and even that was skillfully edited.
 
What Your Delight cannot stress enough was how very, very funny Girl Play is – not once in a while or now and then, no. Girl Play is lighthearted and funny, and crash-and-burn funny. Your Sweetness is accustomed to laughing alone in crowded theaters or waiting for something smart during dumb films. To the very varied group's surprise, we all laughed throughout the film and later offered the movie big tribute: we walked through New York City streets in the rain, quoting our favorite lines.
 
The producers have expressed concern that lesbians are in fact a large enough demographic for the film industry. The two men I sat between had no less glowing praise for Girl Play than I did; one approached Friedlander to make the point: not just lesbians are waiting for a movie this good.
 
In fact, free-thinkers everywhere are. Look up where this lovely small film is showing and take your friends of any exotic stripe. Fabulous, brainy surprises are in store you can only guess at from the film's website and which Your Beloved wouldn't dream of spoiling. Suffice it to say: once you've stopped laughing, and crying, and sweating, you'll thank us later.
 

©2005 Robin Pastorio-Newman