Laurel Hester is married to her job simply because she is determined to be the first female detective in her New Jersey police force to be promoted to the role of Lieutenant. She knows that to make the grade she must act like ‘one of the boys’ which in her case means hiding her sexuality. She is a veteran with 23 years service and so far has managed to keep her personal life private, which is not too tough to do as she doesn’t actually have much going on outside of the Precinct anyway. 
They actually go as far as getting a domestic partnership agreement, but they have it registered at the other end of the State where there is no chance of them being outed. Things finally seem to be going right for Laurel, but then totally out of the blue she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Young Stacie goes into complete denial about it, but Laurel being the pragmatic and somewhat hard-nosed cop immediately starts planning for her demise. She knows full well that once she is no longer around that Stacie will be unable to afford the house payments on her own, and so will end up losing her home.
Last year’s Best Actress Winner Julianne Moore is so sadly miscast as the police detective, and although she delivers some very poignant and emotional scenes as the dying woman pleading for equality, she doesn’t have a single iota of chemistry with Ellen Page as Stacie. There is a infamous myth about lesbians forming relationships with new girlfriends before you can say ‘U-Haul’, but neither Moore or Page gave any real reason at any time as to why we should believe that they were ever remotely in love as they so claimed. Page gave a more convincing performance as the feisty butch girl in her own scenes, and equally superb (as always) was the wonderful dour looking Michael Shannon as Laurel’s detective partner who always had a crush on her himself until he eventually discovered that he hadn’t got a ghost of a chance.
Asides from the unconvincing relationship between the two women which was certainly not helped by such a cliche-ridden script by Oscar nominated writer Ron Nyswaner (‘Philadelphia’), there was the inappropriate clownish performance by Steve Carrel as the meddling gay activist which was a dreadfully embarrassing caricature.
The real-life story itself had been an important milestone in gay equality, and not just in New Jersey, and the actions of this police detective were extremely brave and courageous. She, and we, deserved a much better telling of her story than this disappointing wasted opportunity.
Labels: 2015, dramatized real-life, equality, lesbian, LGBT
