‘The White Lotus’ Lesbian Sex Scene Is An Ode To The Clarifying Hook-Up
Sometimes you need to just make out with someone to move on.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that Valentina was the true highlight of The White Lotus’ second season.
Embodying a heady mix of wistfulness and misandry, our brusque Sicilian hotel manager, played by Sabrina Impacciatore, is one of the show’s few female characters who — in contrast to the TikTok-ready Harper and Daphne — struck me as a real human being.
Over the course of seven episodes, we see Valentina’s emotional journey — shown through the vicissitudes of Impacciatore’s masterful facial expressions – peak during the heartbreaking moment that her oblivious work crush Isabella (Eleonora Romandini), blurts out that she is engaged to fellow colleague Rocco; on Valentina’s birthday, no less.
After Valentina sinks a few martinis at the hotel bar, she’s approached by the chaotic and wayward Mia (Beatrice Grannò), a musician who has been doing the absolute most to bag a job as the hotel’s resident pianist. When Valentina drunkenly reveals to Mia that she’s never been with a woman; Mia casually offers her a kind of lesbian inauguration.
It’s not often that we see the queer stories of Generation X on screen, maybe because a lot of queer TV like Heartstopper and Never Have I Ever explores the emotional lives of teenagers grappling with their sexuality. But Gen Xers, who grew up in the much less progressive climate of the ’80s, remain relatively absent from these stories.
What The White Lotus gave us was a surprisingly sweet scene where a drunk but nevertheless uncomfortable Valentina surrenders to the whim of a 20-something whose youth has shielded her from the the shame and denial that she has probably been burdened with for a very long time.
“It’s not about having sex,” Beatrice Grannò said about the scene in Variety. “Valentina needed to be embraced by somebody…. It’s about being embraced for who she is.” As the philosopher Hegel describes, full individual consciousness only emerges when it recognised by someone else; and in this case Valentina needed to be acknowledged by Mia in order to be free.
The two don’t end up in a relationship, though. Mia, who only dabbles in dating women, promises to find her a “real lesbian for a lover”, and we see that Valentina’s night with Mia was enough for her to fully recognise who she is, allowing her to move on from her feelings for Isabella and open up to the expanse of possibility that lies before her.
Valentina experienced the art of clarifying hook-up; and she’s all the better for it.