Freeheld | Peter Sollett | October 2, 2015
There is a moment in the film Freeheld in which the character Steven Goldstein (a New Jersey LGBT leader played by Steve Carrell) is challenged by cancer-stricken protagonist Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) that he is using what is a very personal, pragmatic struggle between herself and her partner for the exploitative purpose of furthering a larger political agenda. His response is simply, “Yes, that is exactly what I’m doing.” The question I was left with as I continued watching the film was whether that interaction was meant to be taken as a sort of meta-confession from the filmmakers themselves. That question is sadly never really answered by a film that I can best describe as admirably adequate.
Based on a true story, Freeheld follows the relationship and struggles of New Jersey detective Laurel Hester (Moore) and her young partner Stacie Andree (Elliot Page). Fearing consequences at work, Laurel is secretive and deeply private about her domestic partnership with Stacie, but when she is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, their relationship is thrust out of the closet and into newspaper headlines as they battle with local government to ensure her pension is granted to Stacie upon her inevitable death. The film has been a passion project of Ms. Page’s since 2007 (the story takes place from 2002-2006) when a short documentary film was made about the story. It has been in various stages of development ever since. Therein lies the bizarre and unique challenge of queer cinema in 2015. This film carries the banner of the marriage equality movement and, had it been released even one year ago, would have been a much bigger statement than it is in a post-June 26th, 2015 world. So in that regard, it is hard to hold the film’s shortcomings and over-simplified politics against it.
Freeheld is at its best when it is left in the hands of Moore and Page. The first third, which focuses on their love story from its awkward, sweet beginnings, is unsentimental, honest, and genuinely romantic. In this way, the film is indeed progressive in its representation. The women are individual, fully realized characters, not the 2-dimensional poster-lesbians so many films have made their like to be. Theirs is a fairly traditional courtship between two very quiet people loving quietly. And while Laurel is closeted at her office and protective of her privacy, it is never out of shame for her sexuality, only out of a fierce sense of pride and ownership over all she has accomplished within a keen understanding of the system for which she works.
Where the film begins to tread into the territory of schmaltzy moralizing is when the couple is made a symbol of the marriage equality movement by Carrell’s character Goldstein and the drama turns to the inner struggle of the Freeholders faced with the decision to grant Laurel and Stacie’s request. The love story is treated with such nuance, insight, and respect that when the Straight White Male Villains begin speaking in bumper sticker language (“It changes the definition of marriage! It undermines the sanctity of marriage!”), it feels like an entirely different movie, one that we have seen and rolled our eyes at. And sadly, the narrative stays bogged down in this emotional and moral manipulation for the latter half of the film, never allowing the debate to go beyond its usual slogan-driven arguments or given the complex treatment it provides the love story, with private scenes between the two leads resolving to few and far between.
However, the sentimental politics are saved by turning our focus back to the personal lives at stake, with a final scene between Page and Moore that brings the reality of marriage equality to the forefront in a simple, unaffected manner, reminding us of the love story we have invested in with an exchange that packs an enormous emotional punch from both actresses. The personal is political, and while the film does good work in exploring this, it structurally divides the two concepts to a degree where it gets caught in limbo, hovering somewhere between redundancy and progress.
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