‘Walls 2’ Tells of Lives of Lesbians

There is some irony to the way the filmmakers feel about “If These Walls Could Talk 2.” They’re glad to have made it. They’re pleased with their work. And they sort of hope that in the future proud-to-be-edgy HBO wouldn’t greenlight such a project.

“We all hope that 10 years from now that having a lesbian ‘If These Walls Could Talk’ show would be moot,” said Jane Anderson, who wrote and directed one of three segments in the 90-minute film. “Having two women kiss will be too mundane.”

For the moment, that’s not the case. HBO, along with executive producers Ellen DeGeneres, and sisters Suzanne and Jennifer Todd, found plenty of lesbian material that wasn’t too commonplace for the cable network. The structure of “If These Walls Could Talk 2” mirrors its enormously successful predecessor: a series of short films by different directors, with each story set in and around the same house in a different decade. The original, which was seen in October 1996 and dealt with unwanted pregnancies, remains the highest-rated movie ever broadcast on HBO.

What’s striking about “If These Walls Could Talk 2” is what isn’t part of it. There are no coming-out stories. (“It’s so been done,” deadpanned Anderson.) No parent-child melodramas. No gay-bashing. There is only one struggle with discrimination, and it comes from an unlikely source: radical feminists in the 1970s.

Though each of the filmmakers knew the subject of the other films, they worked independently. Yet “If These Walls Could Talk 2” pulls together thematically as well as chronologically. It begins with a death and ends with an anticipated birth. The first characters are closeted; the final couple is living openly and happily. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Suzanne Todd said she didn’t want the film to be preachy--but neither could it ignore how homosexuality remains a politically charged issue. How gays serve in the military resurfaced in the early presidential debates. On Tuesday Californians will vote on Prop. 22, which states: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Gay college student Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming while the film was in pre-production.

“From the first [‘If These Walls Could Talk’], we learned that if you had a good character that you could really identify with, then the rest of it would fall into place,” said Suzanne Todd.

The first character appears in 1961. Edith, played by Vanessa Redgrave, loses her longtime lover to a sudden stroke. Her partner’s nephew (Paul Giamatti) inherits the estate--including Edith’s home. To add insult to injury, the nephew’s wife and child don’t understand that Edith lost more than a “friend.” The piece is all subtext. The meaning comes in what is not said, not done, not even considered.

“I thought about what it must have been like to be an elderly lady back then who’d been with her companion her entire life. And then losing her companion, she’s not recognized as a genuine widow,” said Anderson. “The most important thing about ‘If These Walls Could Talk 2’ is that it is not just preaching to the converted. I wanted to choose a story that an older generation could understand. I wanted to reach out to the audience that is confounded and confused by the idea of lesbianism.”

The second part, set among college students in 1972, explores a time that was confusing even to the characters. Writer Sylvia Sichel’s script, co-written with her sister, Alex (the duo made the 1996 indy film “All Over Me”), deals with levels of outsiders. The feminists, already out of the early ‘70s mainstream, kick the lesbians out of the movement. The clique of lesbians console themselves at a gay bar--where they mock the butch girls in suits, ties and short hair. The interaction might have ended there, were there not a spark of attraction between one of the students, Linda (Michelle Williams), and Amy (Academy Award nominee Chloe Sevigny, who modeled her omnisexy character on a young Paul Newman).

The tension between Linda and Amy is evident, but its source is more subtle. That factionalism--with its implications about identity and how out is out enough--may hit closer to home for gay viewers.

“There’s the panic of saying, ‘Is that me? I didn’t think I was that out in the world, that noticeable, that intense.’ ” Sichel said. “I do hope that the straight audience gets that. It’s a level of complexity at which they should be thinking.” Still, she said, it’s amazing to have something on TV that speaks so directly to gay women.

In the final third, Anne Heche deliberately accentuated the positive. Set in 2000, the film follows a couple (DeGeneres and Sharon Stone) as they try to conceive a baby. It’s Heche’s first directorial effort to be broadcast; another short for Showtime will air later this year.

“I hope that I can give the healthy, beautiful relationships their moment in the spotlight too,” Heche said. “We always see [gays] in such a struggle--like when they’re trying to come out--but there are so many couples who live in such celebration of each other.”

The acceptance at the end of “If These Walls Could Talk 2” doesn’t mark the end of discrimination in the real world, however, several of the filmmakers noted. But the film traces a true evolution, from humiliation to rebellion to integration into the mainstream.

“It personally feels like my arc,” Anderson said. “I went from being ashamed as a little kid, to the ‘70s when I would be damned if anyone would keep us down. And now my partner and I have adopted a little boy.”

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* “If These Walls Could Talk 2” can be seen Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and will be rebroadcast six times in March. The network has rated it TV-MA-L (may be unsuitable for children younger than 17 with special advisories for coarse language).