Film

Lianna

Name: Lianna
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1983
Cast: Linda Griffiths, Jane Hallaren, Jon DeVries, Jo Henderson, Jessica MacDonald

A woman in her thirties, stifled by marriage and suburban routine, discovers intellectual awakening and romantic love with her female professor—then faces the social and personal cost of that choice. John Sayles's 1983 film is tender and unflinching about desire, identity, and the price of honesty. For anyone who's felt trapped by other people's expectations.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like quiet, observant character studies where a marriage's slow unraveling is told through small talk, kitchen-table silences and the textures of an ordinary college town.

Skip it if you want momentum or a plot that keeps moving; much of this is conversation, waiting and domestic detail, and at just under two hours it can feel long.

What it asks of you: Expect a patient, mostly unhurried stretch of talk and looks; feeling is carried by faces and pauses more than by incident, so it rewards full attention.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Desert Hearts1985

A geologist and a reckless divorcée fall for each other in 1950s Nevada. Like Lianna, it's about two women finding freedom in each other, but it leans into romance and sensuality rather than social fallout. Utterly alive.

But The period setting and some of the pacing choices feel very much of the 1980s. If you want something contemporary, this won't scratch that itch.

Carol2015

Two women navigate desire and social constraint across 1950s America. Todd Haynes brings painterly precision to longing and the quiet devastation of choosing between love and safety. Visually stunning and achingly human.

But It's paced deliberately, almost like a painting. Some find it glacial; others find it meditative. Depends what you want from cinema that day.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire2019

A painter and her subject fall in love while an aristocrat commissions a secret portrait. It's sensual, intelligent, and wholly alive to female desire and intimacy. Céline Sciamma builds something rare: a love story that feels like both a gift and a tragedy.

But If you prefer plot momentum to atmosphere and feeling, this will test your patience. It moves at the speed of desire and paint drying.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Lianna

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Fried Green Tomatoes1991

Both films know that women's lives can be transformed by other women, and both refuse to wrap that in a tidy narrative. The difference is register: Lianna is unflinching; Fried Green Tomatoes is working within what the world would allow it to say.

An elderly woman tells a younger one the story of her youth: a lifelong friendship so intense it rewrites what two women's lives could mean together. It's a completely different film on the surface—small-town Georgia, decades ago—but it's about exactly the same secret happiness and unspoken love.

But It deploys nostalgia and Southern charm as a kind of camouflage. The relationship dynamics are coded rather than stated, which some find evasive.

The Kids Are All Right2010

Two women raising two teenagers meet the man who fathered their children. It's warm, funny, and genuinely thoughtful about family, sexuality, and the unglamorous realities of long-term love. Feels like life.

But Some find the central conflict a bit contrived, and the film is perhaps too invested in being likeable. It won't challenge you the way Lianna does.

Mulholland Drive2001

Two women, dreams, desire, and the unstable nature of identity in Los Angeles. David Lynch weaves an intoxicating mystery about longing and self-deception. Not a straightforward love story, but hypnotic and deeply unsettling.

But It's deliberately opaque and demands active interpretation. If you want clarity and resolution, this is the opposite of that film.

Brokeback Mountain2005

Two men meet in summer, fall in love across decades, and face the world's indifference to their love. Ang Lee captures the specific loneliness of desire you can't speak about. Lianna in different clothes, but the pain is identical.

But The tragic arc can feel heavy-handed in retrospect. Modern viewers sometimes find the ending didactic rather than moving.

The Half of It2020

A shy girl ghost-writes love letters for a boy courting the girl the writer herself loves. Alice Wu finds both humor and genuine pathos in unrequited longing and self-discovery. Smart, tender, surprisingly funny.

But It's a teen film, so the stakes can feel smaller. Some of the emotional beats rely on you caring about high school love as much as the characters do.

Personal Velocity2002

Three interconnected stories of women escaping. Rebecca Miller's debut is energetic and formally inventive, capturing the exhilaration and terror of breaking free. One of the stories involves a woman discovering herself through another woman.

But The fragmented structure and handheld style feel dated now. It's also uneven—one story lands harder than the others.

Atomic Blonde2017

A spy thriller set in 1980s Berlin with a queer female lead and a complex female relationship at its center. Charlize Theron is magnificent, and the action is genuinely propulsive. A different genre, same emotional truth about women and choice.

But The plot is secondary to the action sequences. If you're here for story, the espionage machinery can feel thin.

Everything Is Copy2015

Nora Ephron wrote about women choosing themselves; Lianna shows what that choice looks like before the happy ending. Both are about the cost of honesty, but Ephron's film is structured as triumph, Sayles's as rupture.

A documentary about a writer who made her life her art, who refused to disappear into other people's stories. Her daughter Jake Ephron directs this portrait of refusal and reinvention. It's about self-determination the way Lianna is: not as inspiration, but as a choice that costs something.

But It's a documentary, not narrative fiction. And it's about a specific woman in a specific world. If you want the story dramatized, this is the opposite approach.