SCREEN
Pick of the Month
ELISA & MARCELA
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Our wedding issue is the perfect chance to catch up with this sapphic period romance based on the real story of Spain’s first same-sex marriage in 1901 – over a century before it was legalised. Becoming friends at a convent school, and quickly falling in love, Elisa Sánchez Loriga (Natalia de Molina) and Marcela Graciela Ibeas (Greta Fernández) are immediately at odds with their oppressive surroundings, and pulled apart by family, local villagers (literally with pitchforks) and the law. When Elisa disappears and re-emerges as her cousin Mario, the local bishop is fooled long enough to marry them. But wedded bliss doesn’t last and the couple flees, only to suffer arrest, imprisonment and a choice that will nearly destroy them. The marriage, however, is never annulled… Beautifully shot, if a little lacklustre in the telling (even during a kind of threesome with an octopus), Elisa & Marcela recounts a fascinating LGBTQI story previously erased from history – and does so notably with a predominantly female crew. Available now on Netflix