Review of "Cloudburst"

In "Cloudburst" (2011), Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dottie (Brenda Fricker) are lesbians in their 80s who live in a little house by the sea in Maine -- more or less peacefully, though their 31-year relationship contains some playful spark. All is well until Dottie's granddaughter, Molly, tricks her blind grandmother into signing away her power of attorney, which allows Molly to have her put in a nursing home.  Enraged, the fiesty and potty-mouthed Stella sneaks into the home, rescues Dottie, and then heads north to Canada in her rickety red pick-up truck, determined that if the two of them are legally married, they can be protected.  On the way, they pick up a sad and lost New York dancer/hitchhiker named Prentiss.  The majority of the movie is filmed in the cab of the truck or in the little Canadian towns just north of the Maine border.

This film is wonderful.  Stella and Dottie are realistic characters, and their relationship contains the solidity and rough patches a 31-year relationship is bound to contain.  The love between the two is palpable: it's sweet to have the third-person observations from Prentis (Ryan Doucette), but the audience doesn't need that perspective to see Stella and Dottie obviously love each other.  Like the camp comedy of the 1950s, the quest upon which the two women embark to gain legal protection for their relationship is hilarious and over-the-top, as Stella's ridiculously foul language and inappropriate comments get them into trouble and Dottie's blindness causes her to stumble into one very embarrassing situation.  However, like that camp comedy, the film is actually saying something serious.  Look at these two lesbians who have been together 31 years.  Really?  They live in a country where their commitment to each other isn't legal?  Where they have to roadtrip to Canada for legal protection?  At many points in the campy roadtrip scenes, such as the moment when Dottie and Stella get caught in the fast-rising tides, a sense of doom creeps into the comedy.  The two women are together, but barely.  Stella's right to be paranoid.

Olivia Dukakis is incredible as Stella, to the end of the film.  The trick for the viewer is to see her, finally, as Dottie did in her love:  as a woman who has endured too much, who loves big, who knows to recognize her "best day" when it comes.

Every lesbian should see this film, to honor our oldest generation of lesbians, to hear about 1950s lesbian culture and rules, and to find comfort in the camp and truth in the serious.  Other people should see this film, too, but they won't understand it the way we will. . .