Why AWOL (2016) Is Still the Best Small-Town Lesbian Movie Almost 10 Years Later

AWOL (2016): The Lesbian Movie That Still Lives Rent-Free in My Head

Hey girls, gays, and theys — if you haven’t seen AWOL yet, stop whatever you’re doing and fix that immediately. I’m serious. This 2016 indie masterpiece is hands-down one of the most honest, painful, and intoxicating lesbian films ever made, and I will die on this hill.

Directed by Deb Shoval and starring Lola Kirke as Joey and Breeda Wool as Rayna, AWOL is the kind of movie that crawls under your skin and stays there. It’s not glossy, it’s not polished, it’s not trying to sell you a fairy-tale ending. It’s messy, rural, poor, desperate, and so deeply lesbian that every frame feels like it hurts in the best way possible.

The story is simple but devastating: Joey is a directionless twenty-something in small-town Pennsylvania who’s about to ship out to the Army because there are literally no other options. One day at a carnival she locks eyes with Rayna — older, married, two kids, trapped in a dead-end life with a useless husband — and that’s it. Game over. They fall hard, fast, and completely recklessly. What follows is one of the most authentic depictions of first lesbian love, obsessive longing, and the terror of wanting something you know will destroy you that I’ve ever seen on screen.

Let me just say it loud for the people in the back: the chemistry between Lola Kirke and Breeda Wool is fucking nuclear. I’m talking “can’t-breathe-during-the-kiss-scenes” level chemistry. There’s this one moment early on where Rayna teaches Joey how to two-step in a shitty country bar and their hands brush and… yeah, I had to pause the movie to stare at the ceiling and question every life choice that led me to being single. That’s the power of this film. It makes you remember exactly how it felt the first time a woman looked at you like you were the only person who could save her — even when both of you knew you were actually the thing that would ruin everything.

What makes AWOL stand out from so many other lesbian movies is how unflinching it is about class, poverty, and the specific kind of hopelessness that comes from being queer in a place that hates you for existing. Rayna isn’t some glamorous older woman with a perfect life that Joey disrupts — she’s broke, stuck, and willing to risk literally everything for a chance at feeling alive. Joey isn’t a wide-eyed innocent — she’s angry, lost, and ready to burn it all down. Their love isn’t soft or sweet; it’s hungry, possessive, sometimes toxic, and so real it makes your chest ache.

And can we talk about how rare it is to see a lesbian movie that actually lets its women be poor? No fancy apartments, no cool jobs, no supportive friend group drinking wine in Brooklyn. Just carnivals, trailer parks, cheap beer, and the constant terror that someone’s going to find out you’re fucking a married mother of two. It’s gritty in the way But I’m a Cheerleader is campy — completely different vibe, same level of importance in the lesbian canon.

The sex scenes deserve their own paragraph because holy shit. They’re not there to be “tasteful” or “artistic.” They’re raw, desperate, sometimes awkward, always intense. You feel how much they need each other — not just want, need. There’s a scene in the motel room after they’ve run away together that lives in my head permanently. The way Rayna looks at Joey like she’s both her salvation and her downfall? I felt that in my soul.

Yes, it’s a sad movie. Yes, it will probably wreck you. But it’s the kind of sadness that feels earned. This isn’t tragedy porn — it’s the truth of what it means to love someone when the world is built to make sure you fail. And yet, somehow, it’s also one of the most romantic films I’ve ever seen. Because even when everything falls apart, the love was real. It mattered. It changed them forever.

Almost ten years later, AWOL is still criminally underrated. It never got the big marketing push, never made it to major streaming platforms for long (you’ll have to hunt for it, trust me it’s worth it), and most people still haven’t seen it. But ask any lesbian who knows — this movie is sacred text. We pass it around like contraband. We quote it. We cry about it in group chats at 2 a.m. We fall in love with Rayna (Breeda Wool, marry me) and see ourselves in Joey’s reckless devotion.

If you’re tired of the same sanitized, upper-middle-class lesbian stories, if you want to see women who fuck up and bleed and love so hard it scares them, if you want to remember what it felt like when a woman’s touch rewired your entire brain chemistry — watch AWOL.

Just have tissues ready. And maybe a girlfriend to hold you afterward. Or a vibrator. No judgment.

This is the lesbian movie we deserved in 2016, and it’s the one we still need today. Joey and Rayna forever