6 Bisexual Films to Watch

Last February, What’s A Geek gave a list of four LGBT films to watch for Valentine’s Day. Close to the end of Pride Month, we also had a list of lesbian films for you all to check out, then we had a list of gay films the next week. For this round, we’ve got six bisexual film recs!

Kissing Jessica Stein

Director: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
Release: 2001
Running Time: 97 minutes
Language: English

After a string of disastrous blind dates, straight copyeditor Jessica Stein (Jennifer Westfeldt) decides to try out a lesbian personal ad in the paper quoting a line by Rilke, knowing that the ad was for lesbians. But for Helen Cooper (Heather Juergenstein), the woman who posted the ad, it is also her first time to experiment with homosexuality. Hijinks ensue.

Kissing Jessica Stein is less about bisexuality than it is about bicuriousity. As a consequence, the film falls short of exploring the wide plethora of human experience that bisexuality allows. However, through Jessica’s longing for a relationship intertwined with her paralyzing reluctance, the film charts a thorough account of the initial stages of experimentation and bisexual dating, from the highs of newly discovered sexual capacity to the crisis lows of coming out to your family.

Velvet Goldmine

Director: Todd Haynes
Release: 1998
Running Time: 124 minutes
Language: English

Journalist Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) investigates the disappearance of fame-hungry bisexual glam rock star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), one of his childhood idols whose music and theatrics helped him discover his own sexuality. He interviews various people who had been important in Slade’s life, including his ex-wife and first love Mandy Slade (Toni Collette), who endured his affair with Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor). Stuart starts to piece together where Brian Slade has disappeared.

Told with film classic Citizen Kane’s framing device, Velvet Goldmine is a heady, psychedelic send-up of 1970’s glam rock. Haynes is here preoccupied with powerful images in the eclectic style of this musical genre. He combines together various, assorted ideas, and the more clashing the colors and textures are, the better – references to David Bowie are woven to those of Orwell’s 1984, music videos and aliens to Oscar Wilde. This is a feverish detective story about how the American and British music influence each other, and, to a lesser degree, about how representation in popular art, however histrionic, is as influential as an overwhelming, personal need to be heard.

Les chansons d’amour

Director: Christophe Honoré
Release: 2007
Running Time: 100 minutes
Language: French

Ismaël Bénoliel (Louis Garrel) has an arrangement with his girlfriend Julie Pommeraye (Ludivine Sagnier), wherein they can both go to bed with his officemate Alice (Clotilde Hesme). After Ismaël pacifies Julie and her misgivings about the polyamorous relationship, Julie unexpectedly dies. Ismaël is devastated, and his grief leads him to unexpected places. Julie’s family grieves in different ways: her parents reach out to Alice, while Julie’s sister Jeanne wants Ismaël all to herself.

Characters walk-dance on streets, the dead serenade from the night sky, a character sings in a park that she is pretty – openly gay director Christophe Honore’s up-for-anything French New Wave sensibility fits perfectly with its bisexual characters.