Hey. Weighing in late here.
Haven't seen the movie, sounds to me like it falls pretty squarely into the Lesbian Cliche category, but I think the question itself brings up an interesting point - one which hasn't been discussed much here, but which strikes me as being one of the main reasons that we have trouble communicating to other people why the end of the Willow/Tara relationship was part of the cliche.
There seems to be an assumption that for a show to be part of the cliche, it cannot:
1) Portray lesbians in a positive light in any way, or
2) Be a work of quality entertainment or art.
Actually, all it has to do is have the lesbian characters end up evil, dead, or straight. No other qualification. The problem isn't that it's impossible to write a good, tasteful, tender, loving, what-have-you show that ends this way; of course it is, I can think of a number off the top of my head. The problem is that shows that end this way are practically all there is.
Buffy was, for two years in the middle there, about as good a portrayal of a lesbian relationship as we're likely to get. Still ended up cliche. Of course, Buffy also ended up sucking warm sick through a short straw for the last couple of years, too, and the issues are not unrelated, so the two arguments are often conflated. But, while related, they're not the same thing.
Because I *like* a fair number of movies that end up with dead or evil lesbians. I acknowledge they're part of the cliche, but I feel no guilt about liking them, because they're good movies, some with sensitively portrayed characters, good writing, and all the rest. I just want to see a whole bunch of other movies - good and bad - that *don't* end that way.
When I say Buffy falls into this cliche, that isn't saying that Buffy is bad, never did anything good, or that anything it ever did that was good was retroactively destroyed. Those are other arguments, which I might make or not. But it seems to be what people hear, and it's tiresome to have people argue against what is, quite frankly, a fact (Buffy killed one lesbian character and turned another evil), with a completely unrelated defense (Buffy had a good portrayal of lesbians earlier on, it was a good show, the writers clearly aren't homophobes, whatever.)
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
--- kyraroc
Lost in Ecstacy