MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Claire of the Moon’: Women Find Love at a Writers’ Retreat

Nicole Conn’s “Claire of the Moon” (at the Monica 4-Plex and Sunset 5) is a graceful, sensual and persuasive evocation of a growing passion between two very different women.

The setting is a writer’s retreat on the beautiful Oregon coast run by a salty, shrewd middle-aged lesbian (Faith McDevitt) who mischievously has booked into the same cottage the elegant, highly disciplined Dr. Noel Benedict (Karen Trumbo), a respected therapist and writer, and Claire Jabrowski (Trisha Todd), a successful satirist who’s a freewheeling, statuesque beauty with a strong Georgia O’Keeffe profile.

Despite awkward moments, “Claire of the Moon” winds up the best American-made lesbian drama since “Desert Hearts.”

Both women are smart and impressively articulate, something not lost on either, since most of the other women attending the retreat are airheads. However, only when Noel expresses her gayness openly in a group meeting does she commence commanding Claire’s respect, gradually attracting her, although Claire has a hard time buying Noel’s belief that men and women “speak a different language” and therefore can never be as close as two women. (That belief is open to debate, obviously, but how could Noel, as a lesbian, use such retrograde terms as “sexual preference”--rather than orientation--and “lesbian sub culture”?) Is Noel just a passing fancy for Claire, clearly a woman open to all sorts of experiences? Is Claire latently gay? Is she bisexual? Do Noel and Claire have a future together? Conn is too smart to try to answer such questions, instead contenting herself to charting a totally unexpected mutual sexual attraction that builds toward a moment of truth as discreetly presented as it is erotic and beautiful. (Conn’s heterosexual love scenes are also pretty steamy.)

There is an initial archness, a straining for wit and sophistication, at the start of “Claire of the Moon” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes, language, nudity, sex) that gradually melts; it’s as if Conn, as a filmmaker, was developing and growing along with Noel and Claire.

What really makes the film work, however, is that Conn, backed by an imaginative cameraman, Randolph Sellars, is able to create a series of poetic images that continually subvert the film’s torrent of words. Like a good semanticist, Conn knows the crucial difference between the map and territory. Specifically, Conn also knows what Noel and Claire discover: A time comes when two people who are seriously attracted to each other finally need to shut up and make love.

‘Claire of the Moon’

Trisha Todd: Claire Jabrowski

Karen Trumbo: Dr. Noel Benedict

Faith McDevitt: Maggie

Caren Graham: Tara O’Hara

A Demi-Monde Productions presentation. Writer-director-executive producer Nicole Conn. Producer Pamela S. Kuri. Cinematographer Randolph Sellars. Editor Michael Solinger. Music Michael Allen Harrison. Sound Brian Crain. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for adult themes, language, nudity, sex).