Language: German
Year: 2010
Rebecca and Miriam are the latest entry in VL’s storied history of soap-opera sapphism – this is the show that brought us Carla/Hanna, Carla/Susanne, and Carla/half the other female characters on the show to whom she wasn’t related. (There were apparently also some other chicks not named Carla who hooked up at one point, too, but that was before my soap-watching days.) Anyway, Carla is gone now, off gallivanting around the world with newest lover Stella, leaving a lesbian-sized hole in VL’s cast.
Enter Rebecca and Miriam.
Rebecca is one of the von Lahnsteins, the rich, powerful, supremely screwed-up family on which VL centers; Carla was a von Lahnstein, too, though of an earlier generation, so she and Rebecca are related in some way I’m not patient enough to figure out, given the convoluted nature of their family tree. Rebecca’s about twenty, and, from what I can tell, splits her time between making incredibly fashionable handbags and sighing about her awful luck with men. She’s cute, so this is less tedious than it could be:
Miriam, on the other hand, is awesomeness incarnate. She’s a waitress at No Limits, the bar/cafe where the younger von Lahnsteins spend an inordinate amount of time (Hanna worked the same job when she and Carla met, so the writers are either consciously playing up the symmetry or completely out of new ideas) and studies something unspecified at a university we never see. She’s probably the most normal person on this show, and has had some sort of relationship with a woman before. More importantly, she possesses an absolutely flawless bitchface:
Things between Rebecca and Miriam don’t start all that promisingly: they bond over the inadequacy of Düsseldorf’s men, and then, in a move that rates a 7/10 or so on the Soap Opera Implausibility Scale ™, Miriam kisses Rebecca to get rid of some annoying guys. It works, because heterosexual men are clearly turned off by girls who kiss each other. (There are shades of Carla/Hanna here again, too, which makes me kind of curious about the people writing this show.)
Anyway, the kiss causes Rebecca to rethink some things, and what follows is one of my all-time favorite progressions through confusion to desire to decisive action. Most of VL's fandom seems to hate Rebecca, but Jasmin Lord is pitch perfect here – her tentative advances toward Miriam, often blundering but always heartfelt, connect viscerally in a way that little of what’s on TV manages to. There was a point in today’s episode when Rebecca was apologizing for doing something stupid and Miriam smiled and said it’s ok – the stupid is what she likes about Rebecca. It’s what I like about Rebecca, too – that she doesn’t have everything figured out but tries anyway, through the embarrassment and discomfort and all too frequent mistakes. Real life isn't often flawlessly choreographed, and I like it best when my entertainment reflects that.
The whole thing feels real in a way I never expected it to, due in large part to the actresses’ significant chemistry. They aren’t scared to actually touch each other, and have produced some of the hotter kissing scenes I’ve seen in a while. It doesn’t hurt that they’re both gorgeous, but it’s really the fact that they just go for it – there’s none of that “ok, I’m kissing a girl because they’re paying me to but we all know that I don’t really like doing it, right?” that comes through in a lot of girl-on-girl scenes.
(screencaps by Joanna)So, yeah. I'm a fan. That said, I don’t think Rebecca and Miriam are in it for the long haul. From the stuff posted on VL’s website, it sounds like they’ll have a fling that just sort of fizzles out. While it’d be awesome if the writers were to reconsider, I’m ok with this ending up as a footnote in Rebecca and Miriam’s respective romantic histories. It’s (mostly) well written and (definitely) well acted, and not every lesbian relationship has to be about deep, life-changing love.
Sometimes, after all, girls really do just wanna have fun.
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Stay tuned tomorrow for my attempt at German - I know very little, so it's bound to be hilariously bad.
