Year: 1970
Duration: 01:14:16
Directed by: Jack Deerson (as Jacque Beerson) , Barbara Peeters
Actors: Elizabeth Plumb, Alisa Courtney, John Aprea, Wayne Want, Marland Proctor, Luanne Roberts, Elizabeth Knowles, Jamie Cooper
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Just the Two of Us, Je suis une hard-girl
Description:
Denise (Elizabeth Plumb, The Psycho Lover) and Adria (Alisa Courtney) are bored middle-class housewives, neglected by their on-the-road, government-worker husbands. After a chance encounter with a pair of dewy-eyed lesbians at an outdoor café, our girls start looking at each other in a different light. After a sleepover turns Sapphic, our ladies are lonely no more, and they begin doing things that all lesbians do, like riding merry-go-rounds and playing miniature golf. Unfortunately, Adria’s lust becomes wanderlust when she meets a hunky (in that ’70’s way) actor. But the dour Denise still has a thirst that needs to be quenched.
By 1975, lesbians were a provocative, but no longer really hot-button, topic for movies. Audiences had already been offered serious fare such as The Killing of Sister George and The Fox, and lesbians as punch lines in films such as X, Y, and Zee, Cleopatra Jones, and Once Is Not Enough. Ironically (or maybe, understandably), the soft-core antics by filmmakers like Radley Metzger and Joe Sarno, while more sensational, were far less judgmental than their more “respectable” counterparts.
“Respectable” is also not the word that leaps to mind when talking about Harry H. Novak, prolific producer of sleaze cinema. Although it’s a Novak-produced film, Just the Two of Us is neither sleazy nor sick (unless you’re offended by women in polyester muumuus sitting around garishly decorated homes—or if that whole infidelity thing bothers you). Compared to the typical Box Office International production, this one is positively chaste. There is a notable lack of nudity, and what is there is in service of the story. The acting is pretty good, and both the characters and the themes are treated sensitively. In an early scene, Denise, Adria, and two other lonely housewives meet for a bridge game. Adria wears a revealing dress that shocks her friends, but Denise finds it “wild.”
A discussion of lesbianism comes up when our heroines tell their friends about seeing the girls at the café. It’s a good little scene, where characters weigh in with views that are not enlightened but sound right coming from suburban housewives in 1975. When one character refers to homosexuality as a mental illness, Denise explains that her college psychology professor didn’t see it that way and there are a lot of behaviors that might not be considered “normal,” all the while furtively glancing at Adria’s heaving bosom. Later, when they “consummate” their relationship, the scene is played tender and romantic, bathed in shadows.
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