Olivia (film)
Olivia (also known as The Pit of Loneliness) is a 1951 French film directed by Jacqueline Audry, and based on the 1950 semi-autobiographical novel by Dorothy Bussy. It has been called a "landmark of lesbian representation".
Plot
Olivia, an English teenager, arrives at a finishing school in France. Olivia finds comfort in the school which differs greatly from her former restrictive English boarding school and where the students and faculty are welcoming.
The majority of the pupils in the school are divided into two camps: those that are devoted to the headmistress, Mlle Julie and those who follow Mlle Cara, an emotionally manipulative invalid who is obsessed with Mlle Julie.
Olivia becomes an immediate favourite of Mademoiselle Cara who shows her a photograph album full of pictures of the history of the school. When Olivia admires a girl in the pictures, Laura, Mlle Cara becomes angry and withdrawn; another pupil later explains that before she left Laura was Mlle Julie's favourite pupil. Later Olivia hears Mlle Julie reading Andromaque and begins to fall in love with her.