Queer Film Festival, ACMI, 28/03/2010
Status: Behind by 5.7 films
It’s such a shame that the worthiness of the story is not directly proportionate to the greatness of the film.
Hannah Free spans the 80 years of the life shared between two women. Hannah (SHARON GLESS, Cagney and Lacey) is an out lesbian who wanders far and wide, while Rachel is very much in the closet, a widow with two children who goes to church and has never crossed the state border.
Both women are in their 80s and in separate wings of the same respite hospital (Rachel has had a stroke and is in a coma and Hannah broke herself falling off a roof). Rachel’s grown up daughter has never really approved of the couple and refuses to let Hannah see Rachel, which she can do because Hannah is not legally family. When Rachel’s great-granddaughter shows up (herself a lesbian), she is the catalyst for a reunion between Rachel and Hannah and a neatly tied up ending.
Hannah and Rachel’s story is told mostly in flash back, and the film goes the easy (and ultimately least convincing) way, that is, a straight line for the heart strings with a schmaltzy, tension-averse script that (as in common in queer film) mistakes sex for intimacy. Attacks on Christians abound and while I agree with the general sentiment, they’re cheap shots.
Sharon Gless is great, though, as the cranky, wise-cracking, but ultimately vulnerable Hannah. She made an entire cinema-full of lesbians all teary. It’s just a shame the film wasn’t as good as the story was worthy, because then it may have had a chance to preach to an audience beyond the choir.
