Owls, The

Older Wiser Lesbians? Not.

Yes, there is an actual political activist group in the USA, known as Owls, whose members are ‘older lesbians’ who have fought – and are still fighting – everything under the sun to attain socio-political justice. And yes, these lesbians are historically and politically linked to the 70s and 80s’ wild energies of art, movement and language which rocked a generation into queer visibility. Cheryl Duyne’s (of Watermelon Woman and Stranger Inside fame) film, The Owls, is however an edgy, film noir thriller in which murder, sexual frustration and jealousy, dead intimacies, and political atrophy shape the lives of a ‘collective’ of older lesbians. The screenplay is written by Sarah Schulman (novelist of People in Trouble and Rat Bohemia, suer of the producers of Rent for their take-up of her plots and characters), and carries all the hallmarks of her usual biting wit. The movie is half-experimental, half in deadly (no pun intended) earnest, and will appeal to those with anarchic and “old” souls, lesbian or otherwise.