Female Trouble Is Gay

(Welcome to Movies Are Gay, a Pride Month series where we explore the intentional [or accidental] ways LGBTQIA+ themes, characters, and creatives have shaped cinema.)

Nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels, so why would anyone ever want to be nice? Groundbreaking filmmaker John Waters has been lovingly declared "The Pope of Filth" for decades, and subversive queer themes, characters, and performers are present in each of his films. His midnight movie masterpiece "Pink Flamingos" is considered one of the most important films ever made, but asking a Sicko like me to choose my favorite John Waters film is like asking me to choose between my revolting, violent, hilarious, hypersexual children that only a mother could love. But "Female Trouble" feels like John Waters' sensibilities distilled to perfection, with gruesomeness and glamour swirling together to promote the central theme: crime is beauty.

Waters' muse and frequent collaborator Divine stars as Dawn Davenport, a fat, fabulous, flamboyant disaster of a human being whose fame-seeking desires lead her down the road of villainy. She's a thief and a s***kicker, and, uh, she'd like to be famous! The film is Dawn's story, but it's also a perfectly perverse attack on political correctness and a reminder that assimilation does nothing to help queer liberation. As Edith Massey's Aunt Ida so expertly states, "The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life."

"Female Trouble," like all of John Waters' works, is groundbreaking in its unflinching depiction of queerness, but has no interest in portraying queer people as sacred martyrs the way so many of our contemporary works try to do. Dawn Davenport is an unquestionably terrible person, but because it's Divine and John Waters and the rest of the Dreamlanders, subjects like mass murder, child abuse, and even a deranged self-assault where Divine plays a sweaty rapist named Earl who assaults Dawn (also played by Divine) are all entertaining and hilarious. It's as if John Waters took all of the fear-mongering accusations conservative a-holes throw at queer people to try and paint us as dangerous monsters and made a whole movie about how ridiculous of an idea it all is. 

John Waters has said for years that "Female Trouble" is the favorite of his early work, and I eagerly agree with him. He hasn't directed a feature film in almost two decades, which is why cinephiles were in a frenzy when it was announced he was returning to the director's chair with the upcoming "Liarmouth." John Waters is a vital creator and there's absolutely no one else who has or could ever do it like him. As the film famously says, "Queers are just better. I'd be so proud if you was a f*g." Well, Aunt Ida, there's a whole hell of a lot of us to be proud of.

"Female Trouble" is available on VOD.