The Love of My Life is a short Australian documentary portraying the sweet, fierce, and uncompromising love story between the newly-married Gail and Lisette, a transgender lesbian couple in their 60s who live in suburban Adelaide/Kaurna Country.
Angela Viora
Lecturer, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, Faculty of Arts
The documentary, directed by Francesca Rizzoli and produced by Trevor Graham, has been recently aired on ABC TV in Australia, and is since then available on ABC iview.
This work is a strong example of artivism – namely, art plus activism – raising awareness of the LGBTQIA+ community in Australia, as well as making the viewers reflect on how genders are performed, portrayed and perceived in our society.
A work of artivism
The term artivism comes from the combination of the words art and activism, referring to creative expressions aiming to elicit social change by telling untold stories about inequality, discrimination, criminality, and other injustices.
Works of artivism span various disciplines, including visual art, poetry, music, film, and performance.
As the renowned collective Guerrilla Girls state, artivist works aim to “transform audience[s], to confront them with some disarming statements, backed up by facts – and great visuals”.
In Western art history, artivism officially started in the late 1960s with the Chicano art movement in Los Angeles.
This movement was shaped by a confluence of factors, including the ideologies emerging after the Mexican Revolution, the artistic traditions of pre-Columbian civilisations, European painting techniques, and the complex web of social, political, and cultural concerns affecting Mexican-Americans, such as restoration of land grants, and equal opportunity for social mobility.
However, art has been advocating for social change way before the term artivism was coined.
Let us think of 1937 painting Guernica, Picasso’s artistic response to the devastating bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War. The painting captures the profound suffering of innocent civilians, and the tragic consequences of war.
The masterpiece, currently on display at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, stands as Picasso’s most potent expression of political commentary, and is considered by numerous art critics as the most emotionally impactful and influential anti-war artwork ever produced.
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Going back to The Love of My Life, the documentary genre has gained importance over time as a tool for social change for its ability to capture unscripted insights into humanity, contextualise situations, and show us our world, raw and unfiltered.
These human stories are able to create understanding, empathy and action where straight facts often fail.
As artivism, The Love of My Life opens a window on the life of two transgender people from their own points of view, making the viewers understand that LGBTQIA+ rights are not a special treatment for special people, but simply human rights for people as anybody else.
The documentary successfully does so by focusing on the everyday life of Lisette and Gail, spotting ordinary moments common to couples all over the world, of any sex and gender.
The two women do the grocery and cook together, arguing over shallots versus onions; they go clubbing with their friends; they chill on the couch in their pyjamas, Gail reading a book, and Lisette playing with her long hair; and they work out to get in shape for their upcoming wedding.
Does this sound familiar?
Performing genders
The Love of My Life is a refreshing celebration of “the ordinary” in the prevailing media narrative regarding transgender individuals in our society.
As the director of the documentary explains in the Star Observer, such a narrative often revolves around trans-people’s sexuality (especially surgery), resulting in portraying transgender people as “weird“, particularly when it comes to trans-women being depicted as men dressed in female clothing.
Watching the film, Gail came across to me as the shyer and more private in the couple, and I immediately identified myself, a cisgender woman, with her. Lisette, who made the first move, asking Gail out, is exuberant and cheeky, reminding me of a former cisgender male partner of mine.
At this point of the story, I had already been taken beyond genders and what is commonly considered “traditional” and “normal” in conservative discourses around sexuality and family.
The adoration and devotion that Gail and Lisette show for each other, ageing together as the best gift they could possibly each receive, is something I’ve seen in my grandparents, and I dream of for my future relationship – there are no differences.
US scholar Judith Butler is renowned for her stance on sexuality and gender. If biological sex is given at birth, gender is not, it being a performance of social gendered behaviours that we learn, resulting in what we commonly associate with femininity and masculinity – behaving like a “woman” or a “man”.
Language is part of this conundrum, indicating what a man or a woman is. For Gail’s daughter, as she says in the documentary, “the hardest part is the word ‘dad'”.
Gender is open to contestation
Lisette’s mother explains that she always thought that her then-son was gay, but it took her a while to understand what “that word, trans, actually means” and accept it for him/her.
Imposed upon us by normative heterosexuality as a social construction, Butler argues that gender identity doesn’t exist as an objective natural thing, and is by no means tied to material bodily facts. As such, gender is open to contestation and change.
In their previous lives, known as Graeme and Gordon, Lisette and Gail were married, had children, and adhered to traditional male societal expectations as sons, husbands, and fathers. They looked happy, but they were in turmoil deep inside because they knew they were women from a very young age.
Gail discloses feeling trapped in the wrong body, and attempting suicide. In their mid-50s, before meeting, they both reached a critical juncture in life when they could not keep lying to themselves and their dear ones. They bravely came out and openly embraced their transgender identities, choosing new names, and beginning to live authentically as the women they felt they were.
“Being able to love somebody as your true self has a totally different dimension,” Lisette says.
The Love of My Life has a true activist spirit, seeking to engage with a wide-ranging audience, primarily those with limited knowledge of the transgender community.
This is extremely important, given the recent surge of anti-LGBTQIA+ movements in Australia, the US, and Italy, among other countries.
Finally embracing their authentic identities and embarking on a fresh chapter in their lives as an officially married couple, Gail and Lisette also talk about the challenges and triumphs experienced as both transgender and gay persons, fighting a double battle.
Same-sex marriage was finally approved in Australian law in 2017, following a national referendum and decades of campaigning by the LGBTIQIA+ communities and their supporters.
Yet there’s still a long way to go in regard to the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people. According to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, it’s unlawful to discriminate on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status, but there are religious exemptions, and “conversion therapy” is still legal in many Australian jurisdictions.
Forging connections through tolerance and kindness
Despite the increasing occurrence of hate speech and hate crimes targeting transgender individuals, Gail and Lisette approach their narrative with kindness and tolerance, aiming to forge connections even with those who may harbour hostility.
Aiming to foster understanding between the transgender community and society at large, this documentary serves as a profound and universal tale of diversity, love, and freedom, resonating with audiences of all backgrounds.
“I am so much in love with this woman…and that’s why we are going to get married,” a confident Gail says about Lisette, who smiles tenderly and replies, shrugging her shoulders: “… because I am an old-fashioned romantic, I want to marry the love of my life as my true self.”
And so do I. This is a basic human right.
The trailer, the official statement, and behind-the-scenes footage of The Love of My Life are available at The Love of My Life | Documentary Australia, where it ‘ also possible to donate to the crowdfunding campaign to support the project, and its release in schools and universities.
