Tiny Love Stories: ‘The Only Way I’ll Meet a Man’
Sisters of the Moon, with its emphasis on female power, is as much a lesbian cult movie as it is a queer movie. It’s the rare queer movie that deals not with queer identity per se but rather with how to be ourselves in a patriarchal world. The film is set in a small, rural town where women are considered second class citizens. Women can legally marry but are not allowed to vote; they are not allowed to serve as judges. They are forced into the domestic sphere to the detriment of their careers, their education, and, ultimately, their personal lives.
Women are portrayed as objects of scorn, fetishized, and abused. There are no femmes in the film and no femmes, male or female, are referred to by their male names. The only woman we meet is the film’s titular character, Grace. This character is a young black lesbian. She’s the least likely to find a husband or partner of any woman in the film and the one who takes the longest to figure out her deepest dreams.
The film is so specific and specific in its politics that it’s impossible to call it a conventional romance. (It’s not until the final scene that we meet a romantic lead.) It’s also not a film that will make you want to marry a man in spite of its explicit condemnation of marriage (“My name is Grace. I’m twenty-two years old. I’m engaged. I’m a virgin. And I’m a lesbian.”)
But it is a film that has the power to make you want to marry a man. You can marry the film’s star.
In this interview with the film’s press officer, Megan McCardle, we discussed her first meeting with the film’s director, Rachel Ward, whom she met when she was 18. McCardle met Ward online and they quickly became friends. Ward and McCardle went to each other’s houses to watch the films that McCardle was working on. Ward saw a trailer for Tiny Love Stories at the same time McCardle saw the
