Ahead of the Curve

While Ahead of the Curve doesn’t offer any solid answers, it does make the case that understanding lesbian history should be a key part in assessing the future.

First-time director Jen Rainin’s portrait of Stevens, Curve‘s achievements and blindspots, lesbian progress during the Clinton era and the uneasiness with the “lesbian” label among many queer women today is accomplished, resonant and deeply moving.

By attempting to capture the universal instead of focusing on the specific, the film feels like a collection of ideas put forth in an amorphous collage.

Ahead of the Curve does a decent job of summarizing a forty year blur in gay history and Stevens’ role in it as a spokeswoman for her sexuality and community on TV in the ’90s — “Power Dykes,” on the next “Geraldo!” — a pioneering publisher and a leader in the culture’s breathtaking shift in attitudes on sexuality, marriage and gender identity.

It’s a valuable portrait of a great risk-taker.

The film’s subjects are overwhelmingly earnest, but the movie suffers for its substitution of enterprise over entertainment.