Wrought with tenderness and humor, this film is at once a lesbian love story and a political
meditation on "deviant" sexuality, female aging, and breast cancer.
Mildred is a tenured 50-something professor of Women's Studies and a life-long lesbian. Doris,
ten years older, is an artist with no reliable source of income, a grown daughter,
and as she discovers, breast cancer.
When they fall in love, it is Doris' first lesbian relationship. Their personal negotiations with family,
friends and each other serve as the grist for this soap opera cum romantic black comedy.
Never one to follow the conventions of narrative too closely, Rainer herself periodically pops up
to trouble the story with the asymmetries of her mastectomized chest and inquiries into the
politics of breast cancer. It is she who tells us that MURDER is caused by homophobia, nuclear tests,
social oppression, breast cancer, and DDT; while on the other hand, lesbians must (fantasize)
"murder" in order to survive.

Also making appearances are the phantom-like figures of Jenni
Schwartz, (Doris' deceased mother), and the young Mildred, who pop in and out of the story vying
for our attention as they provide their own commentary on the action. In MURDER and murder,
Yvonne Rainer masterfully conducts us through the intimacies of Mildred and Doris' daily lives,
while challenging popular (mis)perceptions, medical definitions and prejudices about disease.