Octogenarian couple remembers 5-decade love affair

And Thea and I were leaning against the counter, and my hand was like this [moving hand forward toward the camera]. I kept almost touching her, and then I felt like an idiot, and I stopped. Okay, I can’t tell you how long — it felt like a year. I put my hand near hers on the counter, and then I took it away. And finally, I said, “Is your dance card filled?” And she said, “It is now.” I grabbed her, and we made love all afternoon, and we went dancing at night, and that was the beginning.

Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement is the touching true story of two women who met and fell in love in the 1960s and stayed together more than 40 years. Using still photos and narration by Edie and Thea, the movie is dreamy, sweet, sunsoaked and more than a little sexy.

The couple describes the burgeoning gay movement in terms that are honest and at times self-deprecating. Two thirds of the way through the film, Edie gives us a tearjerker of a statement about peace, racial and feminist activism: “We marched for everything, and then suddenly I was mad at the whole world, because nobody marched for us.”

Edie’s late-life conversion to marriage crusader is likely to sound a little naive to Canadian audiences, but the story is so honest, the couple so open, it’s easily forgiven.

Edie and Thea is available for order now on DVD and hits the streets Nov 30.

Marcus McCann

Marcus McCann is an employment and human rights lawyer, member of Queers Crash the Beat, and a part owner of Glad Day Bookshop. Before becoming a lawyer, he was the managing editor of Xtra in Toronto and Ottawa.

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