et’s see what’s trending,” says Nicole Kidman, scrolling through Twitter in Ryan Murphy’s new musical The Prom. Kidman’s character and her washed-up Broadway pals (including Meryl Streep and James Corden) decide to become “celebrity activists”. All they need is a cause. Soon enough, Kidman hits on the perfect one: lesbians! In particular, an Indiana student who wants to take her girlfriend to prom. In response, the Parent Teacher Association has cancelled prom altogether. So it’s off to Indiana to change the world, “one lesbian at a time”. The Prom is hardly unique: looking around cinema, lesbian stories have been trending all year, especially those at the serious, arthouse end: Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, for example, which found a moment of man-free bliss in 18th-century France. Or the Venice hit The World to Come, starring Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston, which tells a similar story in 19th-century America. Closer to home, we’ve had the likes of Gemma Arterton’s Summerland; the Cornwall-set Make Up; and, coming soon, Francis Lee’s Ammonite, with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as star cross’d 19th-century fossil hunters. What’s behind this? Have recent reckonings about female and LGBTQ+ representation made such stories easier to get made? Or is the industry cynically jumping on to the Pride float? They are at least doing a better job than their predecessors. Movie lesbians have often been objects of voyeurism, punished for their sexuality, or just one hunky guy away from turning straight. Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct managed all three, which doesn’t bode well for his forthcoming Benedetta, about a 17th-century lesbian nun. It is telling that so many of these stories are set in the past. Perhaps the illicitness adds a romantic frisson to what might otherwise be a straight historical romance, in every sense. It is also an opportunity to congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come. There’s still a way to go, though. We have had another lesbian story set in the present day recently: Happiest Season, with Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis in a festive Meet the Parents scenario. Nothing says progress like the existence of a mainstream lesbian romcom, but the story still revolves round how the couple must keep their relationship a secret. By the same token, as far-fetched as it sounds, The Prom is based on real events. In 2010, a school in Mississippi really did cancel its prom rather than include a lesbian pupil and her date. Can the magic of the movies really help? The Prom and its luvvies certainly believe so. It will take more than a catchy number about religious hypocrisy down the local shopping mall to cure homophobia, you suspect, but its heart is in the right place. Empathic mainstream attention can hardly be a bad thing.