"The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                               June 8, 1995

   The Florida Film Festival is in full swing in Orlando this week and I went
over on Sunday evening to catch a film with the intriguing title, "The
Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love," written and directed by Maria
Maggenti. Like last year's "Go Fish," this is an up-beat, light-hearted love
story of young lesbians. This time the setting is suburbia (Westchester
County, I'd guess) instead of Chicago, the girls are a little younger (high
school age instead of college), and the film is in color with better
"production values" (read: bigger budget). Anyway, it's a really sweet and
funny film starring two very appealing young women, Laura Holloman as Randi and
Nicole Parker as Evie.

   Randi is what people in her high school might call, cattily, a white trash
dyke. She has no parents and lives with her aunt and her aunt's current and
former girlfriends in their chaotic little house on the "wrong side of the
tracks" and she works after school and on weekends at a run down gas station
where she seldom pumps gas, but struggles half-heartedly and unsuccessfully
with her homework and occasionally engages in passionate kissing sessions with
an older, married woman in the station's unappealing restroom. At school,
she's marginalized, gossiped about by the "nice" girls, and has no friends
except Frank, a tall, nerdy-looking, Hispanic gay man who tries to watch out
for her. Randi dresses in dungarees and high top sneakers and likes grungy
rock music on her headphones, her room looks like a hurricane has struck it.

   Evie, who goes to the same high school, is the daughter of divorced, highly
educated, wealthy Black parents. She lives with her international agricultural
consultant mother in an elegant large house ("a mansion" to Randi), loves
classical music and haute cuisine, is part of the "in" clique at school, and
drives her own Range Rover (a gift from her "over compensating," absent
father, a banker). Everything about her bespeaks affluence, grace,
upper-middle-class style; she's off to some Ivy league college in the Fall.

   One day Evie drives her Range Rover into Randi's gas station because she
thinks a tire needs air and she's afraid to put air in the tire. Randi does it
for her and Evie asks her if they don't go to the same school. A few days
later they encounter one another in the restroom where Evie has retreated in
tears after breaking up with her boyfriend and Randi offers a sympathetic ear
and a cigarette. They are caught smoking and given detention together which
gives them a chance to get acquainted. The friendship progresses from here and
I won't tell you the rest of the plot except to say that it begins to get
going in earnest when Randi says Evie has led a sheltered life and Evie
responds by looking her right in the eye and saying, "Unshelter me." She does.

   The film moves at a fast pace, Maria Maggenti gets very nice performances
from her actors and uses her camera to good effect. Things get a little manic
near the end when everyone in both Evie's and Randi's lives are running around
trying to find the two girls. It has a good eye and ear for the excesses of
teen- age love, looked on with a slight air of indulgent affection. These are
good kids who will not, in all likelihood, live happily ever after together
but who will have a great first love to look back on.

    I don't know when this film will be in general release, but keep an eye
out for it. It's one of those rare events, a nicely done, lesbian-positive
feature film.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and
Film.