Monica Davidson is a 3^rd generation fag hag; a straight female friend to the gay man. It all starts when she is given her first pair of disco roller skates at a 1970s party filled with amateur drag queens. Later, four of her male friends from high school confide in Monica and ‘come out’. She accidentally falls in love with her closeted gay flatmate at uni, is rescued by a posse of poofs after her divorce in 2002, and her three daughters (fag hags in training), when only tiny toddlers, are blessed by the all-male Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. At last count, almost fifty of Monica’s lifetime friends are gay men.

Why? Is it some kind of pheromone reaction or fated attraction? Or is it, perhaps, genetic? HANDBAG is a documentary attempt to find out more about this unique friendship, as told through the personal stories of Monica's family and friends. 

Come and see our sizzle trailer - http://vimeo.com/51201522

When Monica’s grandmother Dorothy is a younger woman in the 1950s, she becomes buddies with Keithy, her gay brother-in-law. Dorothy’s family don't approve, but Dorothy becomes Keithy’s ‘beard’ or pretend partner in a time when homosexuality was a crime.

Monica’s mother Pat is best friends with Bobby in the 1970s and her weekends are spent at the local gay bar, Pipers. Later in her life, Pat is the “quilt lady” for the ACON Names Project, gently helping grieving family members and lovers contribute to the famous AIDS Memorial Quilt. She has lost track of Bobby over the years, and wonders if he has survived.

Through the rest of the film Monica will be talking to her own family, and other fag hags young and old about their experiences of befriending and loving gay men. She investigates the complications involved when a fag hag marries and brings a straight guy into the life, as Monica did with her new husband Steve. She confronts her homophobic family about Keithy and the secrets of the past. She helps her mother track down Bobby to see if he made it through AIDS pandemic, and she finally tackles her feelings over the drug addiction and suicide of her closest gay friend Peter.

Most of all, Monica tries to find out why she is so attracted, and always has been, to gay men. Will a DNA test reveal the reasons? Is it something about her face or her demeanour? 

Is she, as she has so often stated, actually a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body?