Customer Reviews

Companions: Tales From The Closet [VHS]

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If you are at all interested in history in general, life stories or GLBT culture and history.... see this wonderful movie with witty, funny, intelligent and yet ordinary old Scandinavian lesbian women telling their life's stories. I dare you to see it without falling in love with at least one of these women!
Granted, you will - as always - get MORE out of the film if you understand Swedish, and don't have to rely on the subtitles, but it isn't at all necessary. Even with "only" the subtitles, you are still in for a great documentary experience.

This film consists of interviews with older Swedish and Swedish immigrant lesbians who talk about what it was like when they were young. One woman who grew up in the USSR was threatened with being sent to a hard labor camp by a girl's parents. "We had to stop loving each other. That's just how it was." During the Stalin era, thousands of gay men were sent to concentration camps, while women were usually more invisible and passed as companions.

All talk about hiding, pretending, trying to find themselves, trying to meet women like them. Some married men as expected, led double lives, or had other ways of coping, like pills, loneliness and depression. All those interviewed lead happy, loving, open lives today.

In Swedish with English subtitles and very interesting to watch no matter how old you are or where you come from.