Foreign films with LGBTQ+ themes can often take a back seat when compared to Western films with similar subject matter. However, these films often have differing themes and characteristics to diversify your watchlist.
Here’s a list I’ve compiled of some of my favourite films under this umbrella that range in genre, so hopefully there is something for everyone!
- Water Lilies
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Marie, Anne, and Floraine are middle schoolers in suburban Paris who get entangled in a love triangle with a boy on their synchronized swimming team. Marie and Anne are best friends, but when Marie becomes interested in Floraine, she attempts to become closer to her and begins to disregard Anne in favour of her new crush.
Water Lilies is largely from Marie’s perspective, and we see the beginnings of attraction through her eyes and all the complexities that come with an adolescent relationship.
- ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
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One of the most famed films from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, All About My Mother is a dramatic comedy that follows Manuela, an Argentine nurse who recently lost her son Esteban to a car accident in Madrid.
This prompts her to find the boy’s father, a transgender woman named Lola, who had been kept a secret from Esteban. Manuela eventually decides to stay in Barcelona and reunite with her old friends, but also take care of Lola, who has HIV.
- Happy Together
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Happy Together is a hazy, contemplative portrait of two men after they move from Hong Kong to Argentina in hopes of mending their volatile relationship. After another nasty breakup, Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai part ways in a new country but frequently encounter each other on the streets of Buenos Aires.
After a series of run-ins and fights, they seemingly separate for good but linger on the connection they will always have. Happy Together is a film that can be deemed as being relatively “plotless” or relying on the aesthetics and tone of the film to tell the story, but it works in favour of its portrayal.
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
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Set in eighteenth-century France, Marianne is a painter who arrives on a remote island to paint the portrait of a young female aristocrat, Héloïse. The only problem is that Héloïse refuses to be painted in an effort to avoid the prospect of being married.
Marianne instead spends days studying Héloïse’s features and painting her in secret, developing a deep fascination with the other woman. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is tense, sexual and (quite literally) fiery with desire, but it also paints a beautiful portrait of a forbidden love.