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Desert Hearts



Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, Desert Hearts, was groundbreaking upon its 1985 release: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a self-financed shoestring budget, by a woman. In the 1959-set film, an adaptation of a beloved novel by Jane Rule, straitlaced East Coast professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) arrives in Reno to file for divorce but winds up catching the eye of someone new, the younger free spirit Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), touching off a slow seduction that unfolds against a breathtaking desert landscape. With undeniable chemistry between its two leads, an evocative jukebox soundtrack, and vivid cinematography by Robert Elswit, Desert Hearts beautifully exudes a sense of tender yearning and emotional candor.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Robert Elswit, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2007 featuring director Donna Deitch
• New conversation between Deitch and actor Jane Lynch
• New conversation between Deitch, Elswit, and production designer Jeannine Oppewall about the film's visual style
• New interviews with actors Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau
• Excerpt from Fiction and Other Truths: A Film About Jane Rule, a 1995 documentary about the author of Desert of the Heart, the 1964 novel on which the film is based
• PLUS: An essay by critic B. Ruby Rich

FrauBlucher wrote:Janus has added it's page and is on home page as well.

If that's not enough evidence, the press book for the film includes the following:

Desert Hearts has been digitally restored by the Criterion
Collection, Janus Films, and the UCLA Film & Television
Archive in conjunction with Outfest and the Sundance
Institute.

Funding was provided by the Criterion Collection,
Janus Films, the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, and the
Sundance Institute.

Here's the Janus re-release trailer:

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Edit - Vimeo auto imbeds, so here's the link for Movielocke: {https://vimeo.com/225571246}

Here's the poster (which has probably a 50-50 chance of becoming the eventual disc cover):

It's too good, Criterion cover will be something worse

Wow, that restoration pops. Forgot how well photographed it is (especially the interiors).

Announced for November

Can't believe they didn't include the Gwen Welles doc

Maybe it'll end up on California Split?

But Donna Deitch made the documentary, so this would be the logical release to pair it with.

And Welles is in this, which may not be clear from Criterion's writeup. How underwhelming

Surprised that Criterion didn't spring for the entire NFB documentary on Jane Rule. It's only 60 minutes long, and they included
the entire Malcolm Lowry doc on Under the Volcano.

Desert Beavers. Now *there's* a porno title if I ever saw one!

Not that I...know of any. It's not like I go out of...my way to....

In all seriousness, I did see Desert Hearts when it was showing at the Brattle. I enjoyed it for what it was, even though I was clearly a far cry from its intended audience (maybe? perhaps?). Now I have a reference point for whenever anyone bemoans "lack of representation" in cinema.

(Not knowing the background history of the film, I am not sure if Deitch made this out of a personal desire regardless of who else would see this or for a specific audience or for a general one. I like to think that while any film can be made with the intent of a particular audience, it shouldn't necessarily exclude one. The only one who can reject a film is you, the viewer.)