Laurie Kahn is a director well known for creating works that, in her own words, “look honestly at communities of women who haven’t been taken seriously (but should be).”1Love between the Covers, from the nonprofit feminist organization Women Make Movies, is no exception. Within this insightful and often hilarious documentary, Kahn shines a much-needed spotlight on romantic fiction in the United States. Focusing on a number of the women who write, distribute, and read romantic fiction, Kahn demonstrates the very real impact of the romance genre on contemporary culture and its continued value to its hundreds of thousands of readers.
Opening with a reference to perhaps the most well-known romance novel, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Love between the Covers sets out its intention from the start: “This is a story about pride . . . and also a story about prejudice.” Kahn’s documentary mounts a...
