Great Escape

It's so sad that this beautiful short seems to have been targeted by homophobes - with most of the ratings only being only 1 star. I though this was such a sensitive and delicate film that portrayed the struggle of an older queer woman, married to a man, but finds herself longing for a lost love from her adolescence. The first couple of minutes is almost completely silent apart from the clip of a bag, the placing of a ring on a bedside table, the winter wind outside.

When the woman leaves, the silence is no more, a hauntingly beautiful song comes on as she traipses through the snow. The cinematography of the winter trees and the falling snow is stunning; being in black and white just makes this film. When she crosses a half-frozen river, we see a flashback to when she and her lover were young and swimming in summer in the very same river. They look so very happy together, throwing their heads back laughing as one ventures to kiss the other on the cheek. As the song builds, we see another woman waiting in a car in the snow, she sees the other woman and they rush to embrace.

This short, in under six minutes, says a lot about society and how people are forced to stay in the closet. Even nowadays, you get people waiting their whole lives to come out, and even still, some never do.