Claire of the Moon

REVIEW
While not the breakthrough lesbian film which many had hoped, Claire of the Moon is an earnest, if amateurish drama of simmering female sexual desire and equally strong denial. At an oceanside women writers' retreat in Oregon, Dr. Noel Benedict (Trumbo), a brooding psychologist and lesbian author of "serious" books, finds herself rooming with her opposite -- Claire (Todd), a willowy yet cynical straight blonde woman who is determinedly messy and fun-loving. Their budding relationship becomes a tense and inadvertently amusing cat-and-mouse game of "I want you...I don't want you" as they alternately try to overcome their insecurities and accept their true feelings. A refreshingly intimate lesbian romance that works as a love story despite being a talky and didactic soap full of typical lesbian stereotypes and featuring a wooden script, stilted acting, and an overload of lingering glances.