Four Films That Tackle the Greatest Taboo

Once homosexuality was the love that dared not speak its name, but with Ellen and Anderson on daytime and a dozen LGB (and occasionally T) characters on prime-time TV now, it's time to look at what might replace homosex in cinema's canon of taboo. Namely: consensual incest. With the recent release of the lesbian film Mary Marie, we look at four films that tackle incest and still made it to the screen. Mary Marie (2012): With the ethereal quality of The Virgin Suicides, Mary Marie is a sweet and disarming, dreamlike film in which Mary (Alana Kearns-Green) and her sister Marie (Alexandra Roxo) live in an insular state of perpetual childhood and semi-incestuousness. After their mother dies, the two girls do everything together, including sleeping and bathing, but when a handyman enters their (now adult) lives, the twosome must confront childhood's end or deal with the possibly violent repercussions of a love triangle. The two stars wrote the film, which is lovely and hard to define but a worthy look at extreme codependence.