Editorial Product Review:Amazon.com essential video:When college professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) arrives in Reno in 1959 to get a quickie divorce, the last thing on her mind is romance. A prim intellectual, crippled by a sterile marriage ('We're a professional couple') and hiding behind her education, she moves into a ranch belonging to Frances Parker (Audra Lindley) and tries to keep to herself. But Parker's beautiful, sassy tomboy of a stepdaughter proves to be quite a distraction, and a love affair slowly blossoms. Cay (Patricia Charbonneau) refuses to be bound by convention or by expectations of how a nice girl should behave, and her devil-may-care attitude both attracts and terrifies the nervous professor.
Shaver is terrific as Vivian, and the slow thawing of her character is beautifully paced--you can feel the tension break when she finally lets down her guard. Another strong performance comes from Audra Lindley as Frances. She's a tough old bird with a drinking problem, but Lindley keeps the character from descending into stereotype, and she gives full rein to the tragic side of this lonely woman, especially as she struggles with her reaction to the developing relationship between Cay and Vivian.
There are scenes in
Desert Hearts that would be painfully clichéd if they appeared in a heterosexual romance, and even here they only just escape that fate--relying a little too much on significant glances and lines that just don't sound like real conversation. Nevertheless, first-time director Deitch breathes new life into a standard straight-arrow-meets-free-spirit plot, and steadfastly refuses to turn this love story into an 'issues movie.' Add to that a strong feel for the period and a soundtrack filled with the likes of Patsy Cline and Gene Vincent, and the result is a warm, well-acted film that packs a real emotional punch.
--Simon Leake
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Buyer Reviews
Average Buyer Rating:
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Old fashioned but relevant
The movie was a bit melodramatic but very effective in making it's point. As a woman who was happily married for 27 of 29 years and only discovered my "true" sexuality at almost 50yrs old, I can relate to the hesitancy of pursing this type of relationship. Based on my experience, I found it depicted a fairly realistic view of a female to female relationship.
Customer Rating: -
Still the Best!!!!
I've seen many lesbian-themed movies over the years and "Desert Hearts" is simply the best, even 14 years after the first time I saw it. Patricia Charbonneau is absolutely delicious as the wild-spirited and honest Cay Rivvers while Helen Shaver gives a powerful performance as the soon-to-be divorced Vivian Bell. When Vivian arrives in Reno to get a divorce in 1959, she finds her world turned topsy-turvey when she meets the free-spirited Cay.
Audra Lindley (Three's Comapny) turns in a great performance as Cay's stepmother, Frances, a woman who seems to be trying to come to terms with Cay's attraction to women but ultimately cannot, especially when Cay finds "someone who counts". Surprisingly, I found myself sympathetic with her situation, even though I am lesbian. Here she takes in her lover's daughter and raises her, only to find that she is "different". It becomes apparent fairly early on, that Frances is lonely and afraid to let go, no matter how healthy that letting go would ultimately be. There is a touching scene where Cay and Frances talk about her staying and even moving east with Frances.
Instead of some story where the heroines go to bed early on, the relationship builds slowly. Donna Deitch develops the romantic tension between Cay and Vivian, building towards an absolutely exquisite lovemaking scene when Cay visits Vivian in her hotel room, after Vivian is forced by circumstances to move from the dude ranch to town. You can see that Cay is quickly attracted to Vivian, but Vivian takes quite a bit longer to come out of her shell.
Silver, Cay's straight friend, and her fiance, Joe, are just super as emotiona and moral support for Cay, and, ultimately for her love for Vivian. Also, Silver has a great voice--I'm not a huge fan of country music, but her song,"Someone to Love", sung at the engagement party for Joe and her, is fabulous. That song alone would be justification for a soundtrack--too bad one was never made. You can see the love Silver and Joe have for one another, but, perhaps because of it, they can accept Cay's lesbianism, and later, support for Vivian and her. Given that homophobia was even worse in 1959 than now, it was refreshing to see straight people who could treat a lesbian just as they would treat any friend.
The music is great and it, along with the costumes, are accurate to the time (I'm old enough to accurately remember the period first hand). The songs are hits of the time, done by such greats as Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Patti Page, Johnny Ray and Elvis Presley, amongst others.Music is important in setting mood and a sense of the time in which a film is supposed to take place. The music of "Desert Hearts" does this admirably--it took me right back to that time.
"Desert Hearts" is a groundmark movie--to the best of my knowledge, it is the first time that an explicit lesbian lovemaking scene is shown. However it is tender rather than excessively graphic. This is one film I can highly recommend.
Customer Rating: -
The best Lesbian Film Made
I watched this when I was 20 and now I'm 40 and I still love it. The storyline is real, the characters feel real, the love/sex scene is realistic and all the stars of the film do a wonderful job. Sure there have been some OK films since, but this remains my favourite and any lesbian out there who does not own a copy - should......My favourite line in the film I use often - Long time no see - "I'm handling it".. Brilliant.
To top it off it has a great soundtrack - Made me rush out and buy a Patsy Cline CD.
Customer Rating: 
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Life and Love in the Desert. Substantive and Hot.
Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) is a dry, sober New York professor of literature stuck in dry, sagebrushy 1959 Reno, Nevada in an attempt to meet the technical requirements for a divorce from a dry, emptily sad, but not unbearable marriage. Yeah, there's a great deal of aridity here. But it's beautiful. This is a good story and it's my kind of country. Early in the film, Vivian tells her divorce lawyer "I want to be free of who I've been." This is a weighty line. Vivian is distant and uptight, determined to keep to herself in Nevada long enough to get her divorce and leave. She's a beautiful 35 year old woman who initially hides herself behind her academic "uniform." In a delightful early scene, her first car ride with young Kay, she literally barricades herself behind her sunglasses.
Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau) is vibrant and hungry, ten years Vivian's junior. She's an open lesbian, eager to find someone to be with. She senses something about Vivian and is attracted to her. Cay is beautiful as she - in a charming scene - sits in a tub with her platonic, mature friend Silver and talks about her attraction to Vivian. Her face is alive and she looks so happy. She knows it's risky and is willing to put everything she has into it. And this is their story as they step through the exciting difficulties of finding each other. I'm not going to spoil the tale, although it's no spoiler to note that this movie is famous for an eventual love scene. I'll just observe that I've never seen kissing as full, sensitive and passionate as that which I saw in this film. It was spectacular. And well-crafted.
Frances (Audra Lindley) is Cay's stepmom and Walter's mom. She's owner and head of the boarding dude ranch where Vivian is living for the month as she waits for her divorce. Frances is stuck in a past in which she lives with the memory of Kay's dead father, Glen, the long-gone love of Francis' life. In one scene in which Frances is dancing with Cay, the viewer knows intuitively that in a very real way for Francis, she's dancing with her dead lover. Glen was also the father of Francis' only child, a son.
Francis' late-teens son Walter (and Cay's half-brother, played by Alex McArthur) is a pleasant, attractive character. "Care for a Chiclette?" My chief complaint is that he just sort of ends up being the charming ranch eunich. This is a movie principally about relationships between women; tension and attraction between Vivian and Cay, between Cay and Francis, between Silver and Cay. Still, I didn't feel that I ended up getting a complete enough picture of Walter. Darrell, Cay's futilely smitten supervisor, and Joe, Silver's grand beau, were male characters also on the periphery whom I felt were better developed even though they had less screen time.
The landscapes, townscapes, sets, hair and costumes were perfect. Late 50s tunes, some country, also complement the visuals, be they part of the soundtrack or background noise on a cinematic radio. Cowboy crooners, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis, Patsy Cline, and such. "Let's pretend that we're together all alone."
I heartily recommend fans of the film take advantage of the DVD screenwriter/directory commentary with Donna Deitch. There's a wealth of wonderful anecdotal stuff on there that will make the viewing experience of Desert Hearts even more meaningful. The filmmaker sold her house so that she could finish this film! There are so many wonderful stories here, and if you listen to Donna talk about her film, you even get a good story about her brief casino cameo role.
