Midweek Movie Club is a movie review podcast from the minds of Teresa Deely and Anabelle Vo. In it, the two women–who have been dating for several years–provide “vibes-only” discussions about good movies, bad movies, and everything in between. While the movies they cover aren’t always gay, Teresa and Anabelle certainly are.
Seeing movies and talking about them has always been one of Teresa and Anabelle’s favorite things to do together. Carefully picking out a movie to watch in the middle of the week gives them something to look forward to, and so starting the Midweek Movie Club podcast was a natural next step.
Teresa studied Literature and Writing at Columbia University and she currently works in Marketing. Anabelle studied film at UC Irvine and she currently works in video production. So they both know a thing or two about storytelling and media.
The first episode of their podcast–aptly titled Don We Now Our Gay Apparel–focuses on Sapphic holiday movies. In it, they delve into nine holiday-themed movies that feature women who love women.
They start with an extensive discussion of Happiest Season (Directed by Clea Duvall, 2020) which they deem to be the worst Sapphic holiday movie with the largest funding. They also get into Lez Bomb (directed by Jenna Laurenzo, 2018), which is yet another movie about the hijinks that ensue when a closeted lesbian brings her girlfriend home for the holidays. Teresa feels that “coming out” stories are reductive and have been done too many times. Anabelle feels that we probably would have begged for coming out holiday movies about ten years ago when gay people were almost never featured in the genre.
They both think that Friends and Family Christmas (Directed by Anne Wheeler, 2023) has cute banter and cute banter between the leads is really important for a rom-com.
Teresa particularly likes Looking for Her (Directed by Alexandra Swarens, 2022) which is about a woman who hires an actress to pretend to be her girlfriend over the holidays, so that her parents won’t know that she has gone through a breakup. Naturally, she falls in love with the actress. Side note: shout out to Alexandra Swarens for cornering the market on indie lesbian Christmas movies. She has written, directed, and starred in three of these.
Finally, Anabelle and Teresa pitch ideas for what their ideal Sapphic holiday movies would be. Spoiler alert: Anabelle’s ideal movie is Hot Frosty but with lesbians.
One of the key points that Anabelle and Teresa emphasize is that we should support Sapphic movies by watching them whether or not we think they are good. It is important to support these lesbian/ WLW filmmakers who are oftentimes going through the challenge of producing their movies independently. If they are given the opportunity to keep making films and honing their crafts, they will most likely be able to put out higher quality content in the future.
My favorite thing about Midweek Movie Club is how cute the hosts are together and how they balance each other out. For instance, Teresa writes outlines for the episodes and Anabelle kind of just wings it. When Anabelle goes on tangents about the virtues of owning physical DVDs or about how Mary Steenburgen (the mom from the movie Elf) is a MILF, Teresa lovingly gets her back on track. The two make a great pair, both in life and on this podcast. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to their YouTube channel.
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