''She Must Be Seeing Things'' is a 1987

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

film directed by Sheila McLaughlin and starring

Lois Weaver Lois Weaver (born October 26, 1949, Roanoke, Virginia) is a Guggenheim Fellowship, Guggenheim-winning American artist, activist, writer, director, and Professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. She is currently a W ...

and

Sheila Dabney Sheila Dabney is an American actress, best known for her co-starring role in the 1987 lesbian feminist film '' She Must Be Seeing Things'' alongside Lois Weaver and directed by Sheila McLaughlin. In 1984, Dabney won an Obie Award for her perfor ...

. It was the film debut of both

and

Peggy Shaw Peggy Shaw (born July 27, 1944) is an American actor, writer, and producer living in New York City. She is a founding member of the Split Britches and WOW Cafe Theatre, and is a recipient of several Obie Awards, including two for Best Actress f ...

. It was controversial when first released.

Plot

The film focuses on the relationship between filmmaker Jo (

) and her girlfriend, lawyer Agatha (

). While tidying the books and papers in Jo's flat, Agatha finds suggestive photos of Jo and her former (male) lovers. She also finds a diary, with more photos and pages about men that Jo has known in the past. Agatha becomes suspicious that Jo is seeing a man as well as her, and even appears to follow her. The film is ambiguous about whether Agatha is imagining events, or whether there really are things going on that she ''must'' be seeing. Despite the strains of an arduous filming schedule for Jo's low-budget film, they are happily reconciled by the end, although the issue of whether Agatha was imagining things is apparently left unresolved. Jo's

film-within-a-film A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes ...

involves the life of

Catalina de Erauso Antonio de Erauso, born as Catalina de Erauso (in Spanish language, Spanish) (San Sebastián, Spain, 1585 or 15921592 according to the baptismal record; 1585, according to sources including the supposed autobiography. See . — Cuetlaxtla near Or ...

(c. 1592–1650), a semi-legendary personality from 17th century Spain. Catalina was given a special dispensation by

Pope Urban VII Pope Urban VII (; ; 4 August 1521 – 27 September 1590), born Giovanni Battista Castagna, was head of the Catholic Church, and ruler of the Papal States from 15 to 27 September 1590. His papacy was the shortest recognized in history. Castagn ...

to live, work and dress as a man. The Catalina story to some extent mirrors the

butch-femme ''Butch'' and ''femme'' (; ; ) are masculine ( ''butch'') or feminine ( ''femme'') identities in the lesbian subculture that have associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. This concept has been called a "way to organize ...

aspect of Jo and Agatha's relationship.

Cast

as Jo *

as Agatha * Kyle deCamp as Catalina * John Erdman as Eric *

Ed Bowes Ed Bowes is a filmmaker, writer, and director who pioneered the use of video as cinema. The first person to make a feature-length film in video, he used poets, musicians, artists, video- and filmmakers as performers in films such as ''Romance'' ( ...

as Richard *

as Jewelry Saleswoman

Critical reception

The film has elicited a wide range or responses, from delight to revulsion and outrage.

Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, who served as a film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1977 to 1999, serving as chief critic for the last six years, and then a literary critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, M ...

, writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', notes that "sexual jealousy is the main force at work ... but you'd never know it from the film's amiable, even dispassionate mood", and called it "a modest, agreeable and doubtless very personal film".

Teresa de Lauretis Teresa de Lauretis (; born 1938, Bologna) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory, ...

considers the film to be about "lesbian sexuality and its relations to fantasy". De Lauretis also notes the ambiguity inherent in the title: is she imagining things, or is it that she ''must'' be seeing things – are there things that she ought to be seeing? Alison Darren's ''Lesbian Film Guide'' notes that it was a "deeply controversial film on release ... upset a wide section of the lesbian community by being a lesbian film largely concerned with heterosexuality ... dismissed outright by some as pornography".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:She Must Be Seeing Things 1987 independent films 1987 films 1987 LGBTQ-related films American independent films American LGBTQ-related films 1980s feminist films Lesbian-related films Films about female bisexuality Films about filmmaking Films about infidelity Films about lawyers 1980s English-language films 1980s American films English-language independent films LGBTQ-related independent films

Plot

Cast

Critical reception

See also

References

External links