Gets lesbian toyed (photos)

Nowadays, lesbian rom-coms are….still pretty rare, sadly, but mainstream enough that Hallmark got in on the action. In 2005, finding one with a relatively wide release was a near fruitless endeavor, which made “Imagine Me & You” something to celebrate. In many respects, Ol Parker’s British import is very much a conventional rom-com: a girl (Piper Perabo) gets married to a nice but boring guy (Matthew Goode) only for her to find and fall for the person she should actually be with. The key difference is that the person she should actually be with is also a girl (Lena Headey). “Imagine Me & You” very much follows all the beats that you’re familiar with, and is maybe a touch stale for it, but the actors are charming, the jokes are witty, and the emotions are heightened from the complications keeping the leads apart being far more realistic, personal, and painful. It’s the clearest cinematic sign that almost anything is better if it’s gay. —WC

Many gay rom-coms try to replicate the gooey, heteronormative standards of their straight counterparts, just with gay people instead of a man and a woman. That makes Jamie Babbit’s triumph “But I’m a Cheerleader” all the more special, a truly queer film by all metrics that straight critics couldn’t get but the queers who saw it could see themselves in. Minting both Natasha Lyonne and Clea Duvall as queer icons — and including an existing gay icon in the form of RuPaul — the film takes the horrifying topic of conversion therapy camps and turns them into a joke, as Lyonne’s girly Megan gets shipped to True Directions to help her become straight, only to find herself and her sexuality. It’s campy, silly, and hilariously funny in its lampooning of gender roles and heteronormativity, but also deeply sincere and lovely, a gentle story of becoming your true self. It’s the holy grail of lesbian rom-coms — and queer rom-coms in general. —WC