Why I love The Water­mel­on Woman

So many films that are con­sid­ered essen­tial queer cin­e­ma do not have hap­py end­ings. Broke­back Moun­tain, the love sto­ry between two cow­boys in Wyoming based on a novel­la by Annie Proulx, cer­tain­ly does not see Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar live hap­pi­ly ever after. The trag­ic real-life mur­der of trans­gen­der man Bran­don Teena is shown in graph­ic detail in Kim­ber­ly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, while Abdel­latif Kechiche’s adap­ta­tion of Jul Maroh’s graph­ic nov­el Blue is the Warmest Colour has been crit­i­cised for depict­ing a sap­ph­ic romance through the lens of the male gaze.

The threat of dis­cov­ery and overt homo­pho­bia is a con­stant pres­ence through­out count­less queer releas­es, with LGBTQ+ char­ac­ters pre­sent­ed as hav­ing trag­ic sto­ries to be learned from, rather than love sto­ries in their own right. The messy parts of queer rela­tion­ships are left out in favour of har­row­ing social com­men­tary. It is only recent­ly that stu­dios have start­ed hand­ing the reins over to LGBTQ+ cre­ators, as seen in Alice Oseman’s whole­some Net­flix series Heart­stop­per and the upcom­ing sap­ph­ic roman­tic com­e­dy Bot­toms direct­ed by Emma Selig­man (whose bisex­u­al dram­e­dy Shi­va Baby was met with crit­i­cal acclaim in 2021). But for as long as the art form has exist­ed, queer film­mak­ers have exist­ed too, even when large­ly ignored by the mainstream.

Cheryl Dunye’s The Water­mel­on Woman shat­tered stereo­types with its release in 1996. It was the first US fea­ture film to be direct­ed by an ​‘out’ Black les­bian, with Dun­ye direct­ing and star­ring in the movie. Her fea­ture was a break­out moment for the LBGTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, mark­ing a high point in New Queer Cin­e­ma of ​‘90s, and fol­lows plucky pro­tag­o­nist Cheryl as she tries to make her way as a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er, work­ing at a video store and film­ing wed­dings as a side hus­tle. She devel­ops a fas­ci­na­tion with a Black actress from the ​‘30s named Fae Richards, known for play­ing ​“mam­my” roles in black and white films. Part mock­u­men­tary, part roman­tic com­e­dy, Dun­ye gives the mid­dle fin­ger to les­bian stereo­types and makes her own path.

But Fae Richards, whom Cheryl becomes fas­ci­nat­ed with, is not real. Her sto­ry, how­ev­er, is informed by the expe­ri­ences of actu­al Black women through­out his­to­ry, such as But­ter­fly McQueen and Hat­tie McDaniel, who were rel­e­gat­ed to play­ing the role of mater­nal fig­ures or dot­ing ser­vants to wealth­i­er white char­ac­ters in many pop­u­lar films of the era, from D.W.Griffiths’ racist 1915 dra­ma The Birth of a Nation to Gone With the Wind (for which McDaniel won an Acad­e­my Award). These ​“mam­my” roles, as they came to be known, are par­tic­u­lar­ly harm­ful due to the impli­ca­tions that Black peo­ple are con­tent with their place as slaves or ser­vants to wealthy white fam­i­lies, and ​‘The Water­mel­on Woman’ refers to the racist nick­name ascribed to Richards with­in the film – she was placed into a box, like so many real Black actors of the era, lim­it­ing her options and per­for­mances as to nev­er upstage the white actors.

Cheryl is imme­di­ate­ly obsessed with Fae after spot­ting her in the fic­tion­al film Plan­ta­tion Mem­o­ries, and sets out to cre­ate a doc­u­men­tary explor­ing her life. As she delves into her research through talk­ing head inter­views, she learns of the actor’s tal­ent as a singer, and her secret love life with var­i­ous women. But find­ing details about a Black actor from the ​‘30s is frus­trat­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, as any spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion is either unrecord­ed or forgotten.

While the premise seems uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly polit­i­cal, Dun­ye paints a bril­liant pic­ture of an awk­ward blos­som­ing romance between Cheryl and white les­bian Diana (Guin­e­vere Turn­er) along­side the explo­ration of Fae Richards. Set behind the back­drop of bustling Philadel­phia, the city’s les­bian scene is depict­ed with vibran­cy and humour. It is often rem­i­nis­cent of Ali­son Bechdel’s long-run­ning com­ic strip Essen­tial Dykes to Watch Out For, where queer sto­ries are shown with an ele­ment of autobiography.

The most poignant scenes in The Water­mel­on Woman involve Cheryl’s sex life. So many sap­ph­ic rela­tion­ships – even those which achieve crit­i­cal acclaim – are filmed from the per­spec­tive of a male observ­er, and as a result feel more like an imag­i­na­tion of how queer cou­ples have sex rather than show­ing the often play­ful aspects of such sit­u­a­tions. The inti­mate scenes between Cheryl and Diana are sen­su­al, lit with warm pinks and yel­lows, and it feels as if the cam­era is not there at all. Yet Cheryl and Diana’s rela­tion­ship is far from per­fect, and things get tricky quick­ly. As Cheryl’s friend and co-work­er Tama­ra (Valar­ie Walk­er) says: ​“All I see is that once again you’re going out with a white girl who wants to be Black.” The film does not shy away from the inter­sec­tion between the queer and Black com­mu­ni­ty – a top­ic that film­mak­ers today still strug­gle to depict realistically.

One of the most intrigu­ing aspects of Dunye’s film is her mas­ter­ful meld­ing of real­i­ty and fic­tion. The lives of Cheryl and Fae increas­ing­ly con­verge through­out. Their rela­tion­ships start to take on a sim­i­lar nar­ra­tive, as Fae was known to be dat­ing the white direc­tor of Plan­ta­tion Mem­o­ries, Martha Page, and Cheryl strug­gles with her romance with Diana. Ulti­mate­ly the fig­ure of Fae Richards affirms that queer Black women have always been here and will not be going any­where. Even though their his­to­ries have been erased, there will always be peo­ple deter­mined to show that they existed.

Dunye’s influ­ence on film is far from over. In the years since The Water­mel­on Woman, she has writ­ten for Net­flix hit series Bridger­ton, and has been devel­op­ing an adap­ta­tion of Scot­tish poet Jack­ie Kay’s nov­el about a trans jazz musi­cian. As The Water­mel­on Woman enters the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion with a new 2K dig­i­tal restora­tion, more audi­ences will have the chance to expe­ri­ence the film for the first time – hope­ful­ly bring­ing Dun­ye more work with it, and inspir­ing a whole new gen­er­a­tion of queer filmmakers.

The Water­mel­on Woman is avail­able on Cri­te­ri­on in the USA on July 11 2023.