Netflix knocked it out of the park with Do Revenge. The film is a loving homage to teen flicks of the nineties and noughties. But it’s also an incredible story in its own right, allowing viewers to go on a nostalgia trip while enjoying something totally new. And I’m not talking about the plot – while entertaining, it isn’t revolutionary. The soundtrack and wardrobe are also flawless, but neither are what makes this film so significant.
With Do Revenge, we’ve entered a new era of lesbian representation; one where the Mean Lesbians dominate.
Fair warning: this article contains spoilers aplenty. If you haven’t already seen Do Revenge, go and open Netflix now. Watch that film. You won’t regret it. Then come back in two hours.
Just in case you deprived yourself of a cinematic experience, here’s how it goes: Drea Torres (Camila Mendes) is Queen Bee in Rosehill Country Day High School. She sets trends with her fashion savvy. She’s on track for Harvard. And she’s dating golden boy Class President Max Broussard – who takes her from scholarship girl to insider. But then the sexy video she sent Max leaks. And Drea’s social stock plummets harder than Wall Street in 1929.
During her summer of lonely exile, Drea meets another outcast: Eleanor Levetan. Eleanor wins Drea’s trust by disclosing that she too was destroyed by the rumour mill, when her first girlfriend lied and said Eleanor forced her into kissing. Drea and Eleanor make a revenge pact, vowing to take down the other’s ex. And though Drea starts off as Revenge Mommy, the student becomes the master.
Do Revenge takes the tried and tested tropes of teen flicks and puts a new spin on them. When Eleanor’s girlcrush Gabbi shows her around campus, pointing out the cliques that form the school’s social hierarchy, it’s a clear nod to Mean Girls. Drea giving Eleanor a makeover is pure Clueless. The twisted revenge plot, with its tangled layers of love and regret, is the direct successor to Cruel Intentions – indeed Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played manipulative Kathryn Merteuil, makes a cameo appearance as the Headmaster.
Where Do Revenge differs in its approach to female rage. In all those classic films, the female protagonists either redeemed themselves or suffered the consequences. Cady Heron realised she was pure plastic and made amends; Cher matured enough to stop meddling in people’s lives; Kathryn Merteuil was finally held to account for her monstrous behaviour.
But Drea and Eleanor bond over their warped ways, realising they’re soulmates. It’s rare for women on screen to be rewarded for acting on her anger – rarer still when they’re brown or lesbian like Drea and Eleanor. Yet this shift in how women are permitted to respond to trauma and the overarching message of female solidarity are entirely fitting with our post-#MeToo cultural landscape. Conversations about image-based sexual abuse – about sexism, racism, and homophobia – are closer to the mainstream than ever before.
Gen-Z, the intended audience for Do Revenge, come to it with a different set of expectations than teen viewers did twenty years ago. As a cheugy Millennial, this makes me feel ancient. But it’s also a good thing, because that shift in viewer expectations allows for positive change. Particularly around how lesbians are depicted.
Eleanor is played by Maya Hawke, our favourite Hollywood nepotism baby, who rose to fame through another lesbian role – Robin Buckley on Stranger Things. The character quickly became a fan favourite for her razor-sharp comebacks. But Robin was sweet under the sarcasm. Whereas Eleanor soft as barbed wire wrapped in cotton candy, using her outsider status to lull everyone around her into a false sense of security.
Eleanor is a Mean Lesbian. And what’s more, she’s totally unrepentant. There is no Come to Jesus moment where Eleanor sees an error in her ways. And there is no narrative punishment for who or what she is. This is a gamechanger in terms of how lesbians are shown on screen.
Even through the latter half of the 2010s, lesbian and bi characters were killed off at alarming rates – often at the height of their happiness or power. And if they were Mean Lesbians, death was pretty much inevitable. Riverdale’s entitled and manipulative rich girl Cheryl Blossom was strangled in her bed. Soft-butch player Daddy died of an overdose in Orange is the New Black. And in Jane the Virgin, scheming seductress Rose Solano was pushed off the top of a building, impaled by a statue, and set on fire (talk about overkill…).
So I watched the second half of Do Revenge with bated breath, waiting for the moment when Eleanor’s life would become the price for her crimes. Even as the credits rolled, I expected it. After all, Eleanor does some pretty sick things. She lies, cheats, blackmails, and even hospitalises Drea in a not-so-accidental car crash. The longer the film went on, the more certain I was she’d die. But that moment never came. And I was overjoyed.
To begin with, a tragic destiny was the only way to get lesbian characters past layers of media censorship. It’s why the pulp novels popular in the 1950s so often ended with a lesbian character going mad, dying, or (the worst fate of all) renouncing her sexuality to marry a man. And while standards have changed for the better in the following decades, the lesbian tragedy trope lingered. The idea that a lesbian had to get her comeuppance remained an unfortunate cultural hangover.
Which is why it’s so refreshing to see an unrepentantly Mean Lesbian get away with it. Not only does Eleanor survive the story – by the end she is positively thriving. Eleanor gets the girl. She burns her enemy to the ground. And then she drives off into the sunset for a road trip with her BFF.
It’s fitting that a Mean Lesbian should flourish in Do Revenge. The film’s twists and turns were directly inspired by Strangers on a Train – arguably Patricia Highsmith’s finest novel. And it was Highsmith herself who wrote the first happy ending in a lesbian novel with The Price of Salt, later reissued as Carol. Seventy years later, for all Highsmith’s faults, she’s still influencing positive change in lesbian representation.
Do Revenge is now streaming on Netflix.
