| The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love | |
|---|---|
Laurel Holloman (L) and Nicole Ari Parker in the movie poster |
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| Directed by | Maria Maggenti |
| Produced by | Dolly Hall |
| Written by | Maria Maggenti |
| Starring | Laurel Holloman Nicole Ari Parker Maggie Moore |
| Music by | Terry Dame Tom Judson |
| Cinematography | Tami Reiker |
| Editing by | Susan Graef |
| Studio | New Line Cinema Smash Pictures |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | June 16, 1995 (United States) September 20, 1996 (United Kingdom) |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $250,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $1,977,544 (USA) |
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is a 1995 film, written and directed by Maria Maggenti, of the story of two very different high school girls who fall in love. It generated good notices and publicity at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival.[1] It also launched the film careers of Laurel Holloman (Randy), Nicole Ari Parker (Evie) and Dale Dickey (Regina).[2]
Contents |
It is spring. Randy Dean is a high school senior with poor grades, only one school friend (Frank, a gay Latino), secret cigarette and marijuana habits and a cashier’s job at a gas station with Regina. She is pursuing a dead-end relationship with Wendy, a married woman who drops by the gas station when it pleases her. This often entails a follow-up visit from her jealous husband, Ali, who roughs Randy up and orders her to stay away from Wendy.
One day Evie Roy stops in a pristine Range Rover, unsure if her tires need air. Randy recognizes her from school and talks to her for the first time. Evie is an only child living with her well-off, cultured mother, Evelyn, who has a difficult relationship with her (re-married) husband. Randy and Evie start passing notes in school and hanging out with each other, although Evie does not reveal this to her cliquish friends. They hang out in meadows, trading music (opera and Mozart from Evie, punk rock from Randy) and talking. At the gas station, Randy rejects an angry Wendy, claiming she has a new girlfriend, Evie.
Evie breaks up with her boyfriend after he complains of her distant attitude towards him. Later, apparently on a spur of the moment, she lends Randy a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which Randy starts to devour.
Inviting Evie to her family’s small house for dinner, Randy reveals to her that she has lived with her lesbian aunt Rebecca and her lover Vicky since Randy's mother abandoned her to devote all her time to an Operation Rescue-like group. On the front steps of Rebecca's house, they kiss for the first time. Evie records it in her diary later, apparently wondering what it all means.
Randy and Evie experiment with how “out” they can be as lesbians, nervously holding hands at a local diner. Remembering Randy’s warning of how intolerant the town can be, Evie nevertheless breaks the news to her three closest friends. One girl is supportive (if confused), but the other two are hostile to the idea: one of them says, “God, Evie, if you were gonna turn gay you think you could at least choose someone who’s pretty.”
Randy’s grades continue to plummet and the school warns her she will not graduate; Randy hides this information from Rebecca. When Evie’s mother leaves on a business trip, the girls take the opportunity to cook a huge meal, indulging in wine and marijuana. That night, they make love, then fall asleep in Evie’s mother’s bed.
The next morning, Evelyn returns prematurely. The kitchen is a mess and used wine glasses are scattered about. Furiously searching the upstairs, she discovers the girls but does not recognize Randy as a girl until she runs past her on her way out.
Meanwhile, Rebecca has learned that Randy will not be graduating high school, and she, Vicky and her ex-girlfriend Lena go to Frank’s house, where Randy had told them she would be staying the night. Rebecca threatens Frank until, panicked, he turns over Evie’s phone number. Rebecca calls, but Evie and Randy have already absconded and she is left talking to a furious Evelyn.
Evie and Randy, crying, scared and accusatory, take refuge in a motel. Randy finally calls Wendy, who comes out, pays for the room and tries to comfort the girls. Ali sees her car in the parking lot, however, and comes bursting in, eventually attracting Evelyn, Rebecca, Vicky, Lena, Frank, and Evie’s three friends, who were driving past reading aloud from Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (apparently still processing Evie’s news). The movie ends with Randy and Evie kissing and hugging in the open motel room doorway while everyone else argues in the background at top volume.
Asked if she was aware how close the final shot was to a classic Hollywood romantic comedy, Maggenti said,
| “ | I never thought of that but a lot of people have mentioned to me that the shot looks like a marriage portrait… That final shot is actually a very ambivalent shot, leaving them at the threshold of adulthood, a relationship, their families, everything.[3] | ” |
Maggenti started a script with an image in her head of a tomboy with love notes in her back pocket, gradually adding more characters such as her tomboy’s family and her love interest. (Later, she realized this character was based on her first girlfriend.)[3] Between 1992 and 1994 her script, a dark look at the middle and end of this relationship, grew until Maggenti abandoned it.
The film’s future associate producer Melissa Painter convinced Maggenti to shop the story around as an independent film; when two producers asked how the two very different girls got together, Maggenti improvised the story of the beginning of their relationship. The producers were delighted with this story, and Maggenti wrote a new script in eight days; surprising herself that her script was now a comedic farce, not about gay love or coming out, but about teenagers’ first love.[3]
Shooting was completed in 21 days.[3] The Horace Mann School in Riverdale, Bronx in New York City filled the part of Randy and Evie’s high school.