Author: Bitch Flicks

It’s Our 5-Year Blogiversary!

BF co-founders Steph and Amber at the 2010 Athena Film Festival

We can’t believe it, but today marks five years since we started Bitch Flicks.
In March 2008, we started a blog with the wink-and-a-nudge name, Bitch Flicks. In that first year, we wrote a whopping seventeen posts, eight of which were actual film reviews.
In 2012 we published 557 posts–and “we” consisted of a dozen people, not to mention numerous guest writers.
We want to thank our Editor and Staff Writer Megan Kearns.
We want to thank our staff writers: Erin Fenner, Robin Hitchcock, Leigh Kolb, Carrie Nelson, Rachel Redfern, Amanda Rodriguez, Lady T, Max Thornton, and Myrna Waldron.
We want to thank everyone who has ever contributed to Bitch Flicks, whether by writing a post, designing a logo, donating, commenting, or sharing a piece you read with someone else.
Everyone mentioned here has been a part of what has made this project continue. 
Finally, we want to thank every one of you reading this–and we hope you’ll stay with us in years to come. 
–Steph and Amber

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ Rekindles the Notion that Women Are Wicked

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

Guest post written by Natalie Wilson. Originally published at Ms. Magazine blog . Cross-posted with permission.
Dorothy Gale—the girl who went to Oz—has been called the first true feminist hero in American children’s literature. Indeed, she was condemned by many readers, including children’s librarians, for daring to have opinions and act on them.
My grandmother introduced me to the Oz books as a child, and I have always seen her as a real-life Dorothy of sorts. Born in 1908, she loved travel and speaking her mind and–gasp–she preferred to read and write poetry than do dishes and cook. As a young woman, she did not take like a duck to the water of motherhood, and indeed seemed not to have liked it at all. To this day, she is referred to by the wider family as “abandoning” her two sons in favor of books and travel, though in fact her only abandonment was that of the traditional domestic role.
My grandmother was, in some ways, the “anti-mother” or “wicked witch” detailed so brilliantly in Crafting the Witch: Gendering Magic in Medieval and Early Modern England. That book, written by California State University at San Marcos’ associate professor of literature and writing Heidi Breuer, explores how magical, positive female figures such as Morgan le Fey morphed into the Wicked Witches that now dominate depictions of magical, powerful women—including those in the current film Oz the Great and Powerful.
The new Oz film does not include the brave and self-reliant Dorothy, nor any other character that I would identify as having my grandmother’s feminist spirit. The film speaks neither to the many strong female characters that populated L. Frank Baum’s books nor to the feminist, progressive leanings of its author. Instead, it trades in the notion that women are indeed wicked—especially those women not “tamed” by a male love interest or father figure, as well as (horror of horrors!) those women who lack nurturing, motherly characteristics.
In the film, Oscar Diggs is the one who journeys to Oz, not Dorothy, and this provides the basis for a much more traditional, or should I say regressive, story. Rather than, as in the original Oz book, having a female save many men and prove the male leader to be an ineffectual fraud, this time around we have an oafish male functioning as the love interest for various characters, transforming from ineffectual Oscar to the great and powerful Wizard and leader of Oz.
At the outset of the film, Oscar is a circus con-man/magician, readily admitting he is not a good man. Though he is framed as an unscrupulous, womanizing cad, he is also depicted as truly sweet and likable underneath—a sort of prince disguised as a beast. When Annie (Michelle Williams) tells him she is going to marry another man, the audience is meant to feel for poor Oscar—because Annie is framed as his “real love.” But by the close of the movie they are happily reunited, not as Oscar and Annie but as Oz the Wizard and Glinda the Good Witch. (This ending, by the way, and the romance threaded throughout the film, breaks a sacred belief of Baum’s that romance should not be featured in children’s tales.)
Baum’s continued insistence, both in his real life and his writing, that females are strong, capable, courageous and intelligent—and that tolerance, understanding and courage should guide one along life’s journey—are scuttled in favor of a movie heavy on special effects and light on character development, let alone any feminist or progressive message.
In contrast, the Oz books are full of intelligent, enterprising, courageous and self-reliant females. There are benevolent female rulers, such as Ozma and Lurline, as well as both good and bad witches. As noted at Bitch Flicks,
Dorothy, Ozma and Glinda serve significant leadership positions in Oz. Princess Ozma is the true hereditary ruler of Oz—her position having been usurped by The Wizard. Glinda is by far the most powerful sorceress in Oz, and both Dorothy and Ozma often defer to her wisdom. Dorothy, of course, is the plucky orphan outsider who combines resourcefulness and bravery.

Illustration of Dorothy and Toto from
L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel.

Indeed, the books would pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. Strong friendships between women, as well as women helping other women (and various and sundry other creatures, men included), run through the 14 original books. (Some current readings posit these relationships as more than friendship, as with the queer readings of the Dorothy/Ozma relationship, but that’s another story.) There are wicked women, but they are not wicked to the extent they are in the film iterations, the current one included, nor are the wicked/bad characters very powerful. In fact, the Wicked Witch of the first Oz book fears the Cowardly Lion and the dark, and is destroyed by an angry Dorothy with a bucket of water. Before dying she concedes, “I have been wicked in my day, but I never thought a little girl like you would be able to melt me and end my wicked deeds.” The Wicked Witch in Baum’s book did not have green skin or wear an imposing outfit; instead she is a rather funny-looking figure with one eye, three braids and a raincoat.

In Baum’s version of Oz, females were allowed to have power and show anger without being castigated—something rare in books from Baum’s era. Also rare were female protagonists in children’s books, which is why, according to one scholar, “The Wizard of Oz is now almost universally acknowledged to be the earliest truly feminist American children’s book, because of spunky and tenacious Dorothy.” Baum’s work even hinted at the instability of gender—as when Ozma is first introduced as a boy named Tip. Traditionally masculine in many respects after her turn to female, Ozma’s gender is thus represented as not only about physical characteristics or appearance, but as far more complicated. Quite postmodern and queer for a children’s book from the early 1900s!
In addition to these feminist characters and depictions of gender, the books also consistently celebrate tolerance and diversity and maintain what Alison Lurie calls an “anti-colonial attitude.” This is no coincidence; rather, as documented in the BBC’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The True Story, “When L. Frank Baum wrote the Wonderful Wizard of Oz book, his choice of heroine was heavily influenced by the battle for women’s rights.” He was married to Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, the pioneering feminist and co-founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
While some still question feminism’s influence on Baum (as here), and it is often wrongly claimed that he and his feminist mother-in-law did not get along (as in The Dreamer of Oz), Baum’s faith in feminism never wavered. He supported feminism both within his own home (Maud ran the finances and his mother-in-law stayed with them six months out of every year) and in his writings (not only in the Oz books but in his journalistic work). Moreover, Baum thought men who did not support feminist aspirations were “selfish, opinionated, conceited or unjust—and perhaps all four combined,” and he argued that, ”The tender husband, the considerate father, the loving brother, will be found invariably championing the cause of women.” (One wonders what he would make of director Sam Raimi and his decidedly un-feminist new depiction of Oz!)
Baum’s feminist biography aside, many aspects of the books stand on their own as fictional feminist tracts. For example, the second book of the series, The Marvelous Land of Oz, features a fictional suffrage movement led by Jinjur, the female general of an all-girl army (their key weapon is knitting needles). At one point, Jinjur offers the rallying cry, “Friends, fellow-citizens and girls … we are about to begin our great Revolt against the men of Oz!” As a New York Times‘ reviewer quipped, it is too bad this female army “didn’t storm Disney next.”
Symphony rehearses live performance of
1939 Wizard of Oz soundtrack.

In contrast to the consistently anti-feminist Disney, Baum’s books can be viewed as children’s stories with distinctly feminist and progressive messages. Given that they were akin to the Harry Potter books of their day in terms of popularity and sales, this is hugely significant. Today, however, the books’ undercurrents of feminism and progressive politics have been overshadowed by the less-feminist 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, and the many subsequent de-politicized adaptations.

In Oz the Great and Powerful, perhaps the most anti-feminist adaptation, Dorothy—the plucky and powerful girl from Kansas—is supplanted by a series of Oscar’s romantic interests, and this focus does not shift after a mighty storm transplants us from Kansas to Oz. There, Oscar quickly meets Theodora (Mila Kunis), who tells him of the prophecy that he is destined be the leader of Oz. However, she warns him, “You only become king after you defeat the Wicked Witch.” Metaphorically, for men like Oscar to achieve greatness they need to destroy powerful women. And, significantly, in order to destroy the witch Oscar must not kill her but destroy her wand—in other words, destroy her (phallic) power, destroy what makes her “like a man.” (I imagine Baum turning over in his grave).
Oscar, like the audience, does not yet know who this Wicked Witch is—a mystery that the film’s publicists went to pains to protect before it was released. This mystery suggests any female could be the Wicked Witch or, more broadly, that all women are or have the potential to be wicked.
When Oscar first meets Theodora, the audience is encouraged to view her as kind, helpful and beautiful. She, like the women from Kansas, seems taken by his charms. In contrast, her sister Evanora refers to Oscar as a “a weak, selfish and egotistical fibber.” Evanora’s fury, as well as her witchy get-up, encourages the audience to think she is the Wicked Witch. When Theodora insists Oscar is the wizard, Evanora’s caustic response—“’The wizard, or so he says. He may be an imposter. Sent here to kill us”—furthers the suspicion.
Then, when Evanora says “Maybe it’s you I’ve underestimated. Have you finally joined her side, sister?” the audience is once again encouraged to question who the “her” is. Theodora protests, “I am on no one’s side. I simply want peace. He’s a good man,” suggesting she is not on the Wicked Witch’s side. But Evanora retorts, “’Deep down you are wicked!’
Theodora then throws a ball of fire across the room, prompting the audience to once again question who the real Wicked Witch is. The mystery continues when Oz, his monkey sidekick Finley and the China Girl (a porcelain doll) spy a witchy-looking figure in the dark forest. But the scary figure turns out to be Glinda, who is quickly identified as a “good witch” not only through the ensuing dialogue but via her blonde hair and white dress.
This delaying of the true identity of the Wicked Witch and the suggestion that even good women can be, or at least appear to be, wicked, goes along with the fear of female wickedness that shaped not only the Renaissance era and its infamous witch hunts but continues to be a key trope in our own times. Sadly, the new film reifies messages contained in so many stories of the witch–that females not tied to or interested in men/family are jealous, duplicitous, vengeful and must be destroyed (or domesticated). The good females in the film function as a mother/daughter pair, both of whom, by film’s end, are tied to Oz as their patriarch.
The film can also be read as yet another story about how men are destined to lead while women are destined to mother. This goes directly against the original author’s beliefs; as his grand-daughter notes, “He was a big supporter of women getting out into the marketplace and men connecting with the children and spending time at home.” In direct contrast, the film punishes female entrepreneurial spirit and pluck and never suggests that any of Oscar’s greatness comes from his desire to spend time at home. Instead, he is ultimately rewarded by becoming the “great and powerful” man the title refers to, and the female characters are either punished for refusing the maternal role (Evanora and Theodora) or rewarded for placing primacy on family (Glinda and the China Girl).
As wonderfully put in the New York Times review of the film, Oz the Great and Powerful “has such backward ideas about female characters that it makes the 1939 Wizard of Oz look like a suffragist classic.” While the 1939 film was decidedly less feminist than the book on which it was based, it nevertheless was far more feminist friendly than this current iteration.
That a book published in 1900 and a film that came out in 1939 are each more feminist than a 2013 film is troubling. The NPR review agrees, but then claims that what this indicates is “that chivalry (or perhaps feminism) of the sort that Judy Garland could count on is not only merely dead, it’s really most sincerely dead.” Simplistic reading of chivalry aside, the suggestion that feminism is dead has perhaps never been more wrong than it is now. Sure, we still have our wicked witches to face (I am talking to you, Ann Coulter), but we also have a plethora of Dorothys and Ozmas and Jinjuras—not to mention L. Frank Baums.
It is particularly disappointing that films aimed at children and families continue to be not only un-feminist but devoutly anti-feminist, and they do so by drawing on the stereotypical witch figure of centuries ago—used, as Breuer puts it, to “frighten women back into domestic roles.”
Alas, just as the 1939 film reflected the economic realities of its time, turning Baum’s story into a call for women to return to the home (as in, “There’s no place like home”), so too does this 2013 version speak to the current economic crisis. Times of economic downturn are predictably accompanied by sexist backlash—a sort of knee-jerk “Let’s blame it on the women that steal our jobs, refuse to do their duties (mothering, cleaning, etc.) and threaten the stability of family, of church, of the very nation.” Currently, this backlash is evident on many fronts–from the attacks against women’s reproductive freedoms, to the vitriol aimed at women who dare seek independence or even the right to report rape, to the hyperfocus on romance, sexuality and appearance as the only things that truly matter to women.
The message of the original book was that possibilities for a liberated world of tolerance and female equality was not merely a dream but a real place we could move to if we only had the courage (and the heart and the brain). The message of the 1939 film was that women can have some power, but home and family was still the best place for them (and liberation was merely a dream caused by a bad bump on the head). The message of Oz the Great and Powerful is that only men can save women and only men can save Oz; in other words, what we need to save us from falling off the economic cliff is not Dorothy, not Glinda, not the China Girl, but a gold-digging con man who is adept at smoke-and-mirrors politics but has about as much substance or real conviction as, well, many of our current world leaders. These frauds are apparently still better than any woman though—be she good, wicked, or made of porcelain.
Illustration of Dorothy and Toto by W.W. Denslow, from Wikimedia Commons
Image of 1939 film from Flickr user Jason Weinberger, under license from Creative Commons

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Foreign Film Week Roundup

Gender, Family and Globalization in ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’ by Emily Contois

 

Foreign Film Week: Red, Blue, and Giallo: Dario Argento’s ‘Suspiria’ by Max Thornton

Sexism in Three of Bollywood’s Most Popular Films by Katherine Filaseta

BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Realistic Depictions of Women and Female Friendship in ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ by Libby White

‘War Witch’: Finally, a Movie About Africa Without the Cute White Movie Star by Atima Omara-Alwala

A Thorn Like a Rose: ‘War Witch’ (Rebelle) by Emily Campbell

‘The World is Ours,’ a Feminist Film by Eugenia Andino Lucas — a review in English y en Espanol

Remembering, Forgetting and Breaking Through in the Female Narrative of ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ by Leigh Kolb

Growing Up with ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’ by Lou Flandrin

‘Lemon Tree’ Unites Two Women from Palestine and Israel by Megan Kearns

As a Collector Loves His Most Prized Item: ‘Gabrielle’ (2005) by Amanda Civitello

The Disturbing, Terrorizing Feminism of Dušan Makavejev’s ‘WR: Mysteries of the Organism’ and ‘Sweet Movie’ by Leigh Kolb

A Failed Attempt at Feminism Impedes ‘Rust and Bone’ by Candice Frederick

The Accidental Feminism of ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ by Nadia Barbu

Growing Up Queer: ‘Water Lilies’ (2007) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011) by Max Thornton

Magical Girlhoods in the Films of Studio Ghibli by Rosalind Kemp

‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ and Male Adaptations of Fantasy by Emily Belanger

Female Empowerment, a Critique of Patriarchy…Is ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ the Most Feminist Action Film Ever? by Megan Kearns

Let the Right One In by Stephanie Rogers

Let This Feminist Vampire In by Natalie Wilson

‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ by Amber Leab

‘Los Ojos de Alicia’ by Amber Leab

‘Persepolis’ by Amber Leab

‘The King’s Speech’ by Roopa Singh

‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ by Megan Kearns

‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’ by Megan Kearns

‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ by Megan Kearns

‘Incendies’ by Vicky Moufawad-Paul

‘Atonement’ by Marcia Herring

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ by Tatiana Christian

‘The Descent’ by Robin Hitchcock

Top 10 Best Female-Centered Horror Films by Eli Lewy

‘Where Do We Go Now?’ by Kyna Morgan

‘Fire’: Part One of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements Trilogy’ by Amber Leab

‘The Artist’: “Peppy Miller, Wonder Woman” by Candice Frederick

Best Documentary Oscar Nominee: ‘Pina’ by Ren Jender

Preview: ‘The Iron Lady’ by Amber Leab

Best Actress Nominees: Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams by Gabriella Apicella

‘The Lady’ vs. ‘The Iron Lady’: Who Gets the Vote? by Candice Frederick

Preview: ‘Albert Nobbs’ by Amber Leab

‘Albert Nobbs’ Review: Exploring Constrictions of Gender and Class by Megan Kearns

Indie Spirit Best International Film Nominee: ‘Shame’ by Clint Waters

Indie Spirit Best International Film Nominee: ‘Melancholia’ by Olivia Bernal

‘Melancholia’: Take 2 by Hannah Reck

‘Room in Rome’ by Djelloul Marbrook

“Love” Is “Actually” All Around Us (and Other Not-So-Deep Sentiments) by Lady T

‘The Lady’ Makes the Personal Political by Jarrah Hodge

‘The Lady’ vs. ‘The Iron Lady’: Who Gets the Vote? by Candice Frederick

Motherhood in Film and TV: ‘Mother’ by Tatiana Christian

‘Splice’: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist by Mychael Blinde



The Four Mothers of ‘Hanna’ by Rachel Redfern

‘Cloud Atlas’ Loses Audience by Erin Fenner

Please, ‘Turn Me On, Dammit!’ by Rachel Redfern

‘Skyfall’: It’s M’s World, Bond Just Lives In It by Margaret Howie

The Sun (Never) Sets on the British Empire: The Neocolonialism of ‘Skyfall’ by Max Thornton

 10 Statements ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Makes about Women’s Rights by Myrna Waldron

The Depiction of Women in Films about Irish Politics by Alisande Fitzsimons 

‘Anna Karenina’ and the Tragedy of Being a Woman in the Wrong Era by Erin Fenner

Gender and Food Week: ‘Life is Sweet’ by Alisande Fitzsimons

It’s “Impossible” Not to See the White-Centric Point of View by Lady T

Extreme Weight Loss for Roles is Not “Required” and Not Praiseworthy by Robin Hitchcock

‘Les Miserables’: The Feminism Behind the Barricades by Leigh Kolb

‘Les Miserables,’ Sex Trafficking and Fantine a Symbol of Women’s Oppression by Megan Kearns

‘Les Miserables’: Some Musicals are More Feminist Than Others by Natalie Wilson

Feminism & the Oscars: Do This Year’s Films Pass the Bechdel Test? by Megan Kearns

Feminism in ‘Aiyyaa,’ and Why It Ain’t Such A Bad Movie by Rhea Daniel

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Ballet Shoes’ by Max Thornton

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell, My Concubine’ by René Kluge

A New Jane in Cary Fukunaga’s ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011) by Rhea Daniel

Comparing Two Versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Lady T 

How BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Illustrates Why The Regency Period Sucked For Women by Myrna Waldron 

‘Women Without Men’: Gender Roles in Iran, Women’s Bodies and Subverting the Male Gaze by Kaly Halkawt

2013 Oscar Week: ‘A Royal Affair: More Royal Than Affair by Atima Omara-Alwala 

2013 Oscar Week: ‘A Royal Affair’ by Rosalind Kemp





2013 Oscar Week: ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ Makes Race Invisible by Robin Hitchcock

2013 Oscar Week: Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices by Jo Custer

2013 Oscar Week: Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices by Jo Custer

2013 Oscar Week: Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices by Jo Custer

Penetrating History in ‘Hysteria’ by Rachel Redfern

Shut Up and Sing: The Dixie Chicks Controversy Ten Years Later

Movie poster for Shut Up and Sing

This is a guest post by Kerri French.

This month marks ten years since Natalie Maines made her infamous statement during a packed Dixie Chicks gig at Shepherd’s Bush in London, acknowledging the recent events pointing to the United States’ imminent invasion of Iraq by saying “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” Two days later, the latter part of her statement was quoted in the British newspaper The Guardian and soon picked up by the Associated Press, grabbing headlines across the US. While the Dixie Chicks initially tried to downplay Maines’ comment in the hopes that the controversy would blow over, it quickly became evident that there was no turning back from the stand they had taken.

Targeted by the right-wing group Free Republic, their number one single quickly fell down the charts, album sales dropped, and radio stations refused to play their music. Faced with boycotts throughout their summer tour and the possibility of losing corporate sponsorships, Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison quickly realized that the issue could not be easily swept away and chose instead to embrace the controversy, framing it as a free speech issue that they would not back down from. They found themselves further faced with harassment, vandalism, and threats of violence, serving as an example to the rest of the country as to what can happen when you choose to express an unpopular opinion.

The Dixie Chicks messing around on stage

Throughout this time and for the three years following, filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck documented the band’s reaction and response to the treatment they faced following their 2003 statement. Alternating between footage filmed immediately after the 2003 controversy and two years later as the Dixie Chicks were writing and recording Taking the Long Way, their 2006 album that served as a response to the backlash they experienced throughout their Top of the World tour, Shut Up and Sing highlights the ways in which the band was forced to reconsider not only how they presented themselves as artists but what kind of music they now wanted to create. Maines, Maguire, and Robison take on the task of writing an entire album of songs for the first time, using many of the songs as a way to reflect on and respond to the hostility, threats, and pressure that surrounded them several years prior. As Kopple and Peck show the band preparing to promote the new album, it becomes evident that the 2003 controversy has become a part of the band’s identity, even three years later when Maines’ actual words have been forgotten by most. Refusing to apologize for what they believe in became deeply embedded into who they were, unable to be separated from the discussions of how best to introduce the music industry and fans to the band’s move away from a more straightforward country sound that now incorporated rock and pop influences. Maines in particular seemed hesitant to introduce their new sound and songs too quickly, wanting to be more cautious than Maguire and Robison out of fear of the backlash the band could experience all over again. The documentary offers a very real glimpse into not only how three musicians balance their career with their beliefs, but also how they deal with the emotional aftermath of all that they are up against.

The Dixie Chicks on Entertainment Weekly
What is most impressive, however, is the way Kopple and Peck use the documentary to capture the bond and friendship among three women facing enormous pressure in an industry that refuses to reward women for being true to themselves. Despite countless questioning from the press over how Maguire and Robison feel regarding Maines’ statement, the band continues to think of themselves as a “we” and Maguire and Robison’s support of Maines is unwavering. Indeed, the band doesn’t back away from the controversy that the statement created, refusing to cater to a fan base and industry that showed them so much hostility. The film highlights the band’s anger in conversations filmed backstage during their 2003 tour, with each member arguing with longtime manager Simon Renshaw over what constitutes a radio ban, insisting that they have done nothing wrong and have no reason to show remorse or ask for a second chance. The connection between these three women appears to only grow stronger the more they embrace their newfound political roles as advocates for free speech. In one poignant moment, the documentary shows Maguire tearfully stating that Maines still blames herself for what happened, despite Maguire’s insistence that it was the best thing that could have happened to their careers. She continues, stating that she would give up her career if that is what Maines needs. Their 2006 studio album has, in fact, proven to be their last; despite brief reunions to play a handful of concerts together, the band has headed in different directions, with Robison and Maguire forming the duo Court Yard Hounds while Maines is set to release a solo album with a decidedly more rock focus in May.

The Dixie Chicks singing the National Anthem

Watching the documentary so many years later, it is hard not to wonder why these three women’s actions in particular so enraged the country. The Dixie Chicks were certainly not the most outspoken celebrities to speak out against the war, yet theirs is the controversy that will ultimately be remembered from that time. Was it more shocking that three country musicians could be politically and socially liberal? Admittedly, it probably came as no shock that Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were against the war, but even liberal Americans must have been surprised that it was the Dixie Chicks of all artists who managed to stir up such strong feelings about patriotism and the war.

Still, the question arises whether these three women were punished so harshly because they were country artists whose opinions went against the grain of a large percentage of their fan base or because they were women who dared to have an opinion. Would a male country artist expressing antiwar sentiment have been met with radio bans and death threats? The behavior of male country artists, after all, is often excused or even glorified with their “rebel” persona; it’s all well and good for male musicians to be loud and outspoken but when a woman dares express an opinion outside of what middle America believes, she not only puts her career at risk but exposes herself to harassment and discrimination from fellow musicians, the country music industry, and all of its fans.

Fans unite in support of The Dixie Chicks
And harassment and discrimination is the only way to fairly describe what happened to the Dixie Chicks in the wake of their 2003 statement against the President. Not only did Clear Channel Communications strike the group from country radio station playlists, the uproar from fans wanting all of their CDs bulldozed was nothing short of a modern day witch-hunt. Metal detectors were installed at their shows throughout the summer and a police escort was needed that July when the FBI revealed knowledge of a death threat against Maines in Dallas. Fellow country artist Toby Keith, branding Maines a “big mouth,” began using a doctored photo of Maines with Saddam Hussein as a backdrop at his concerts while singing “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the U. S. of A. / We’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way”—an act that he was never reprimanded for, despite the use of Maines’ image serving as nothing but pure incitement of hatred and violence against a woman who dares hold her own political opinions. The irony, of course, is that it was the Dixie Chicks, not Toby Keith, who had to worry about their tour sponsorship deal falling through when Lipton sent in a PR consultant to discuss whether the company felt they could go forward with the relationship after the band’s “brand” had been tarnished.

The Dixie Chicks sweep the 2007 Grammy Awards
Ten years on, the very conservative demographic who demonized Maines for expressing her disapproval of President Bush and the war are now the ones saying far worse about President Obama. Maines’ statement seems absolutely uneventful in comparison, so much so that the country’s response to her words is near comical when viewed now. Still, the documentary serves as a reminder that the way these three women were treated was anything but comical; it is clear that under the right political circumstances, political groups and corporations can exert enormous pressure on those who choose to express an unpopular opinion. It is especially fitting, then, when the Dixie Chicks return to Shepherd’s Bush in London at the end of the documentary to promote their new album and Maines jokes that she would like to say something the audience hasn’t already heard before and then goes on to say, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” This time around, the comment wasn’t met with protests and boycotts; the band was instead rewarded in early 2007 when they swept the Grammy Awards by winning all five categories for which they were nominated. In the end, the Dixie Chicks committed themselves to remaining true to who they were no matter the professional, financial, or personal cost—something an audience has rarely heard before, indeed.

 The Dixie Chicks perform “Not Ready to Make Nice” at the 2007 Grammy Awards Ceremony
Kerri French is a poet whose writing has been featured on Sirius Satellite Radio and published in Barrow Street, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Sou’wester, Waccamaw, Barrelhouse, Best New Poets 2008, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. A North Carolina native, she currently lives in Cambridge, England. 



Foreign Film Week: Magical Girlhoods in the Films of Studio Ghibli

Guest post written by Rosalind Kemp, previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 30, 2011.

“For the people who used to be ten years old, and the people who are going to be ten years old.”

— Director Hayao Miyazaki on Spirited Away

The films of Studio Ghibli provide their viewers with a rich variety of female characters from warrior princesses to love-struck adolescents, curious toddlers to powerful witches. These characters owe a great deal to the prototypes of European fairy tales and Japanese folklore and in many ways are traditional versions and depictions of femininities, but there’s an underlying sense of joy for feminist viewers in that these girls and women are active, subjective and thoroughly engaging. I’m focusing here on young girls in the lighter end of Ghibli’s production including sisters Mei and Satsuke in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service and Chihiro in Spirited Away.

Spirited Away

Ghibli films tend to blend fantasy and reality so that magic and flight are acceptable parts of the worlds the characters inhabit. Girls especially tend to possess magic powers or particular appreciation of them and this is shown in an unexceptional manner. While Kiki raises some eyebrows in her new town, it’s because the townsfolk don’t see many witches, not because they don’t believe in their existence. Similarly, although Kiki is an outsider, there is a distinct lack of threat to her for being so. In Ghibli worlds girls are fully entitled to fly on broomsticks, as long as they don’t congest traffic, and 13 year olds are allowed to pursue their cultural practices of living alone. In My Neighbour Totoro when Mei tells Satsuke and their father about her encounter with Totoro, after initial disbelief they embrace the truth that there are friendly nature spirits in the area, even leading to father taking the girls to pay their respects to the forest’s deities.

This acceptance of magic is refreshing and marks a clear difference to American cartoons where ironic references are embedded in children’s fantasy to appeal to parents. In this way parents are encouraged to indulge, but secretly laugh at their children’s engagement with fantasy. There’s no knowing irony in Ghibli films, instead they are focussed on telling children’s stories for children and the lack of distinct boundaries between the magic and the mundane are part of this child-centred view. That the protagonists are predominantly female makes for a collection of films focussed on girls’ adventures and triumphs where girls’ experiences are trusted and valued.

Children, like women, are often depicted as having a close connection to the supernatural; that they can see things the rest of us cannot. Indeed Mei and Satsuke seem privileged more than anything to be invited to join the Totoros’ night-time nature ritual. Dancing and flying with creatures the rest of the world (the Ghibli world at least) would revere but aren’t lucky enough to encounter. Chihiro doesn’t have a natural affinity for magic but she’s gifted in the solving of magical problems like how to clean a dirty river spirit.

Mei, Satsuke, Kiki and Chihiro all work within the magical world as part of their quest narratives. Mei and Satsuke are dealing with the illness and potential death of their mother and a move to a new home. Kiki has moved away from her parents according to witch culture and Chihiro seeks the return of her parents from the spiritual realm where she’s been trapped and they’ve been turned into pigs.

My Neighbor Totoro
In all three stories there’s also the seeking of identity for the girls, especially and most literally for Chihiro for she has her very name stolen by a witch. In their quests for self-hood and identity all four characters go through similar trials and experiences: the absence of parental influence, the access to magical powers, the physical manifestations of anxieties such as the dust bunnies that feature in both My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away.

The absence of parents is a common way to allow independence to young females from fairy tales to Jane Austen and unlike for orphaned boys in fiction it can also represent a removal of patriarchal influence in general. It’s not just that these girls don’t have parents guiding them or checking up on them; they are also free to create their own rules of engagement with the world.

One way that all four girls find meaning and self is through work. Satsuke in school and house work, Mei despite being very young does gardening, Kiki sets up her delivery service and Chihiro works in the bath house. All of them do a lot of cleaning. There’s an interesting mix of public and private here and certainly the suggestion that domestic labour can be especially rewarding (for example Kiki’s paid work can provide anxieties and problems). But is the culturally feminine nature of this work an issue? In Chihiro’s case cleaning is linked to subservience and being a captive to the domestic but for the others (and eventually for her) it’s a tool of empowerment and liberation. Does such labour inevitably have negative associations of female drudgery?

Another way that selfhood and identity is achieved by these girls is by flight. Most obviously for Kiki where her broomstick is literally the means of earning a living and saving a friend’s life but also in how Totoro and Cat Bus fly Mei and Satsuke away from their worries and later to their mother. Chihiro’s flight is more anxious, as her encounters with magic are generally, but still serves to move her closer to self discovery by being the time she gives Haku his name so leading her to the rediscovery of her own.

Kiki’s Delivery Service
Work as empowerment isn’t the only moral message in these films, with ecological messages also being played out. In My Neighbour Totoro there’s the idyllic agricultural setting as well as the Totoros and other spirits of the forest. In Spirited Away rivers like Haku’s have been filled in because of the greed of humans. The messages of conservation, respect of nature (and blaming of humans as nature’s destroyers) are not as forcefully applied as in, for example, Princess Mononoke but neither are they subtle. While this preaching could be tiresome in other films, because of their earnestness and how the protagonists are fully on message it’s actually pleasant. Although nurturing the planet back to health is presented as an ungendered activity the films together can be viewed as showing the next generation of empowered young women actively making progress and solutions to the problems inflicted on the world by older generations. This also applies economically where Kiki and Chihiro’s enterprising labours lead to success for both. Chihiro especially is placed at the beginning of the film in the context of a Japan after economic downturn and reckless financial behaviour by her elders (as reported by her father) damaging Japan as a whole and its youth implicitly.

Not everybody believes that Ghibli heroines represent empowered femininities. I’ve been rather selective in the choice of films to cover but even if I’d widened the selection I stand by my view. Ponyo for example wasn’t included as its heroine isn’t really a girl but although it’s a variation on the disempowering The Little Mermaid the core message is rather different. Ponyo accepts a loss of powers because they were never entirely hers and the sea’s power remains with the feminine; Ponyo’s sea-goddess mother.

There’s been significant note of the glimpses of knickers we get in Ghibli films like when Kiki is flying and generally when there’s any rough and tumble. There’s merit in the argument that this could be voyeuristic representations of young girls but it can also be seen as further expressing their freedom and activity. These girls don’t worry about skirts riding up because they totally lack vanity and are preoccupied with altogether more important missions. We’re not given alluring peeps at nubile bodies but girls in action which female bodies so rarely are; that gaze is usually reserved for male bodies. If female passivity is alluring then the kinetic energy of these girls places them beyond that.

What’s pleasurable about these films from a feminist perspective is their alliance with joyful, engaged and active girlhoods. These girls don’t wait for princes and don’t focus on their appearances but determinedly pursue their missions, however difficult.

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Rosalind Kemp is a film studies graduate living in Brighton, UK. She’s particularly interested in female coming of age stories, film noir and European films where people talk a lot but not much happens.

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up Queer: ‘Water Lilies’ (2007) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011)

Written by Max Thornton, this review previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June 26, 2012.
Céline Sciamma’s films are ever so French. Light on dialogue, they tend to rely on lingering shots of longing glances and exquisite mise-en-scène to reveal character; loosely plotted, they leave the impression less of a story than of a series of vignettes, of tiny moments freighted with great import.

These techniques are uniquely suited to the onscreen portrayal of adolescence. It almost seems churlish to complain that Water Lilies and Tomboy lack full structural coherence, because that’s arguably intentional. Growing up, after all, is not a tightly-plotted three-act hero’s journey with clear turning points, tidy linear progression through the successive stages of personal development, and a satisfying ending. It’s a messy and confusing struggle to find a place in the world, littered with incidents that may or may not ultimately be significant (with no way to tell the difference), and most of the time the morals make no sense.

Sciamma instinctively understands this, and the little stories she tells of growing up queer are given vivid life through her two greatest strengths as a filmmaker: her ability to coax marvelously deep and naturalistic performances out of her young actors, and her eye for a strikingly memorable little scene that perfectly encapsulates a moment of overpowering adolescent emotion – the normally boisterous Anne clutching at a lamppost and weeping in Water Lilies, for example, or Tomboy‘s Laure curling up on the couch, thumb in mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by an earlier humiliation.

Both films are carried on the remarkably expressive faces of their lead actresses. There are no voice-over monologues or expository conversations, but both Water Lilies and Tomboy present the inner life of their protagonists with stunning depth and rawness.

Movie poster for Water Lilies
The protagonist of Water Lilies is Pauline Acquart’s Marie, a quiet fifteen-year-old with a crush on Floriane, star of the local synchronized swimming team. Marie’s best friend Anne, meanwhile, has her eye on Floriane’s boyfriend François. So far, so Gossip Girl, but there is nothing over-dramatic or sensationalistic about the way this love quadrilateral plays out. Although the film’s primary focus is on the blossoming friendship between Marie and Floriane, there is a clear thematic through-line of what it is to grow up female in the patriarchy. Marie, Anne, and Floriane all embody different ways of being young women, and especially young women coming into their sexuality.

Anne, though less conventionally feminine than the other girls, is confidently heterosexual and determined to sleep with the boy she finds attractive. Marie is so eager to spend time with Floriane that she agrees to help her sneak out to meet François, and her yearnings for the lithe bodies slipping through the water are beautifully conveyed through moments such as the shot of Marie shifting, flustered, as Floriane unselfconsciously changes into a swimsuit right in front of her. Floriane herself, despite the reputation she cultivates (perhaps recognizing that denial would be futile – once branded a “slut,” a teenage girl is hopelessly trapped in a no-win morass of contradictory social pressures), eventually confesses to Marie that she has never actually had sex, and in fact is afraid to do so.

“If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”

“I have to.”

“Where did you read that?”

“All over my face, apparently. If he finds out I’m not a real slut, it’s over.”

Floriane recounts several instances of sexual harassment from men; when Marie has no similar stories to share, Floriane tells her, “You’re lucky… very lucky.” And perhaps to some extent she is. Perhaps, as Anne and Marie float fully-clothed in the pool at the end of the movie, while Floriane dances alone for the boys she’s not certain she even wants to be with, they are considering their good fortune: they, at least, are strong enough to defy the patriarchal dictates around female sexual behavior, to name and claim their desires (or lack thereof), to make mistakes and learn from them without being defined by them. Growing up female in this world is hard, but they know they will make it.
Movie poster Tomboy
Tomboy tells a very different story of growing up queer. Zoé Héran turns in a truly remarkable performance as androgynous ten-year-old Laure, who, on moving to a new neighborhood, is asked by the friendly Lisa, “T’es nouveau?” – “Are you new?” – in a way that genders Laure male. In that moment, Laure becomes Mikael, a boy who spends a happy summer among his new friends and his puppy-love girlfriend Lisa. For the duration of the summer, Laure is confined to home and family (well-meaning dad, heavily pregnant mom, hyper-femme little sister Jeanne), and Mikael is the face presented to the world.

Any ten-year-old lives in the present, and Mikael meets each challenge as it arises – sneaking away deep into the woods when the other boys casually take a pee break; snipping a girl’s swimsuit into a boy’s, and constructing a Play-Doh packer to fill it; swearing Jeanne to secrecy when Lisa unwittingly tells her about Mikael – even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that eventually Laure’s parents must find out about Mikael. As loving as they are, they still exert some gender-policing of their oldest child: Mom’s delight at hearing that Laure has made a female friend (“You’re always hanging out with the boys”) might have been tempered if she’d remembered that “copine” can also mean girlfriend!

The relationships between the various children are superbly observed, and constitute reason enough to see Tomboy in themselves. The energetic activities of childish horseplay that give Mikael such joy in himself and in his body – dancing enthusiastically with Lisa, playing soccer shirtless, wrestling in swimsuits on the dock – are balanced by the many lovely domestic scenes demonstrating the closeness of Laure’s relationship with Jeanne. This is honestly one of the most moving and genuine cinematic portrayals of a sibling relationship in years, and after her initial shock Jeanne takes to the idea of Mikael like a duck to water, boasting to another child about her awesome big brother, and telling her parents that her favorite of Laure’s new friends is Mikael.

The parents themselves, unfortunately, are much less accepting of Mikael. The film’s ending is ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings of the exact nature of Laure’s queerness; indeed, the film has been criticized as “an appropriation of trans narratives by a cis filmmaker toward her own purposes”; but to me the ending is terribly unhappy. With deep breaths and with profound conflict on Héran’s preternaturally expressive face, the character is forced to claim “Laure,” the name and gender assigned at birth and not the ones of choice. The cissupremacy has won this round.

Though Tomboy is the better film, the two movies make excellent companion pieces. Between them they depict a range of queerness and explore a variety of strategies for growing up queer (and/or female) in a hostile world. And yet they offer no easy solutions, no cheap moralizing, no promise that it gets better. These films, and the characters they portray, simply are. And, in the end, isn’t that the one universal truth of queer people? There is no ur-narrative of queerness. There is no right or wrong way to be queer. We simply are.

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Max Thornton is a Bitch Flicks writer, blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Foreign Film Week: The Accidental Feminism of ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’

 Guest post written by Nadia Barbu.

 In the 1960’s and 70’s, the regime of Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was considered one of the more liberal in the European Soviet block, and maintained diplomatic relations with Western countries (US President Richard Nixon visited him twice; the Queen of England bestowed upon him a knighthood). Of course, such a glorious leader required a large population to honor him and enjoy his enlightened rule. In 1967, he released a Decree that outlawed abortion (and, unofficially, all other forms of birth control too).
What followed was an organized madness aimed at turning women into baby-making machines. People who remained unmarried or childless after the age of 25 had to pay a special “celibacy” tax. Thousands of women died in agony or were permanently damaged by back-alley abortion attempts. Miscarriages were investigated and the women who suffered them were treated like criminals. Working women were forced to undergo medical exams at their workplace, with any pregnancy suspicion to be reported and monitored. Many of those who couldn’t terminate abandoned their babies, and Romania became infamous for its gruesome orphanages where unwanted children were left to die of starvation or diseases caught through poor sterilization of medical equipment.
It is in the aftermath of the infamous Decree that writer-director Cristian Mungiu set his 2007 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which would go on to win Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and near-universal praise from film critics all around the world. The film doesn’t really go much into explaining the details of its universe, though, so I assume that more than just one pair of untrained eyes didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps it’s for the best, and maybe we shouldn’t burden Mungiu with the responsibility of making some grand political statement when he just wanted to tell the story of a few individuals navigating those times. Then again, I’ve read many comments who were oblivious to the political context, harshly judging the characters by measuring them up to the standards of modern life in a Western country, or misinterpreting this depiction of an illegal abortion as an argument against abortion in general, and this is such an inflammatory issue, that maybe in this case a more in-depth explanation of the film’s setting was absolutely required, especially since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not a film you can easily forget, for better or worse.

Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The story is focused on university students and friends Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), who is pregnant (guess how far along?) and seeks an illegal abortion. While Gabita is the one with “the problem,” the burden of solving it falls mostly on Otilia, the obvious protagonist, who has to book a hotel room, scramble for money, bribe the abortionist, all while fitting in a dinner with her boyfriend’s unpleasant family. The affair takes an even nastier turn when (spoilers) Mr. Bebe, the man who is supposed to perform the procedure, is unhappy with the payment and requests sex with both women as a compensation. The girls are initially shocked, but see no other option but to give in and the abortion happens. The film doesn’t shy away from a shot of the dead fetus on the bathroom floor. Yes, it’s all exactly as bleak as it sounds, sometimes compellingly so, sometimes in ways that seem forced and calculated.
Although played brilliantly by Vlad Ivanov (who has since become typecast as the absolute bad guy of Romanian cinema), I feel that Mr. Bebe cheapens the story a bit by being such an unambiguous, black-and-white villain. It’s as if Mungiu feared that we wouldn’t understand or find meaning in the women’s plight if they were ‘only’ being violated by suffering pain, risking injury and death, or by being treated by the state as nothing more than incubators; some literal rape was necessary to hammer the point home. It’s not enough that Otilia and Gabita’s friendship has an obvious power imbalance, in which Otilia behaves like a workhorse getting everything done for her friend — she has to literally prostitute herself for Gabita.

European dramas have been described as award-baiting “misery porn” more than once, endlessly piling misfortunes on the characters, and while I don’t think 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is misery porn, the scene in which Mr. Bebe demands sex with the two girls made little sense to me, except that it made me cringe, but it’s not like the film didn’t have enough cringe-inducing material already. Would the film have been just as talked about without the rape? Or without the seemingly endless shot of the aborted fetus?

Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) and Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
This doesn’t mean that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days isn’t capable of subtlety. Maybe the most heartbreaking aspect of a system without reproductive rights is the loneliness of the women enduring it, while their partners continue to demand intercourse in the name of love, and often refuse to take any responsibility for its consequences in the name of freedom. Heterosexual romance is a celebrated force in pretty much every culture. Yet the much-praised mirage of wonderful romantic love suddenly seems nothing more than hypocrisy when one of the lovers is faced with the reality of having to “solve the problem” of an unwanted pregnancy on their own. Love is for two, but any subsequent suffering is just for one, something not to be talked about. At the family dinner party which Otilia attends for her boyfriend’s sake, she is more or less openly humiliated, yet her partner makes no effort to take her side, all the contrary: he expresses irritation at her inadequacy in filling the social role he had assigned for her. In a private conversation, Otilia asks him how they would deal with a pregnancy: he hasn’t even considered the issue. There is no ’we’, just appearances to be preserved and conventions to be perpetuated. At no other moment did the film seem as poignant to me, and so sensitive to gender issues.
Is 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days a feminist film in spirit? Well, it does pass the Bechdel test with flying colors, but writer-director Mungiu has spoken again and again about the film’s unwillingness to take sides in the question of reproductive rights, and this could in fact be constructed as making a case for each side depending on your point of view. The only other “abortion movie” in Romanian cinema was a Communist propaganda film in which the girl seeking abortion is “punished” by suffering a gruesome death as a consequence; Mungiu’s film stays clear of such obvious moral judgements, although it’s pretty clear that not only the monstrous abortionist, but the woman having the procedure herself are less than pleasant characters, and the filmmaker himself does personally seem to consider abortion unethical.

Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Centering the story on two women and their friendship is just as unusual in Romanian cinema as everywhere else, sadly. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days could look like a showcase of female solidarity: the women have only each other to lean on, out of desperation if nothing else, Otilia plays the role of the supportive partner to Gabita, whose co-author in the pregnancy is nowhere to be seen or even mentioned, and she openly states that she would put her trust in Gabita to provide similar help. Yet this idea dissolves at a closer scrutinizing — Gabita is an underdeveloped character who is just as exploitive and entitled towards Otilia as the other people surrounding our protagonist, and other signs of women’s collaboration are nowhere to be seen.  

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not a story of female resistance against an oppressive regime: stripped of any semblance of agency, Otilia is utterly alone, and even though the story has her running around all the time with apparently endless energy, her energy is entirely put to the service of others: her friend, her lover or who else may need her. The helpful woman, always hard-working, always self-sacrificing, her body and mind never belonging to herself or her own goals: this is Otilia, nothing but a pawn. Mungiu said he didn’t write the character with gender issues in mind, but it’s hard to imagine a man in a similar selfless, self-effacing role.

Perhaps 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ends up making a statement about gender and patriarchy without aiming to do so; perhaps it was inevitable, due to the subject matter. Its deeper observations about the oppression of women are, however, doomed to be drowned in debate on pro-choice vs. pro-life, shock value and the calculated artsy-ness of its minimalistic style — which is a shame, since it’s a story so rarely told in such an open manner.

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Nadia Barbu lives in London, has a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a master’s degree in film and is very likely to someday start a PhD in Something Completely Different. So far she has written about politics, feminism, saving the planet, film, fashion, design, and many other things; at the moment she writes mostly about animation and can be found here http://www.animationmagazine.eu/author/nadia/.

Foreign Film Week: A Failed Attempt at Feminism Impedes ‘Rust and Bone’

Guest post written by Candice Frederick, originally published at Reel Talk. Cross-posted with permission.

At its core, there’s something very interesting about the small yet much buzzed about French film, De rouille et d’os, which is translated in English as Rust and Bone. Its off kilter premise, which follows the extraordinary love story of an amputated killer dolphin trainer and the lover she befriends during her recuperation, is fresh enough to attract audiences. The lead performances by Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts are both layered and beautiful to watch. But where it falters is the latter half of the story (written and directed by notable filmmaker Jacques Audiard of The Beat That My Heart Skipped fame), and the evolution (or lack thereof) of its protagonist and reluctantly drawn heroine.
It’s very easy to write a lead female character and call her a heroine, simply because she’s a woman and much of the plot revolves around her. But it’s another thing for her to actually be a heroine, a character someone can look up to or aspire to become. Stéphanie (Cotillard), a sexy wild animal trainer-turned-bewildered amputee, has all the potential to become that person. But instead her story inches its way toward progression only to become wilted and ultimately eclipsed by the neverending and somewhat unrequited compassion she has for her male counterpart, the weary absentee dad Alain (Schoenaerts).
Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) in Rust and Bone
When we first meet Stéphanie, she’s a fierce dolphin trainer who knows her way around a club and literally has to beat the guys off with a stick. She gets into a scuffle outside a club one night, and Alain (who’s a bouncer) intervenes and saves the day. He ends up driving her home and icing his now bruised hand. While there, he encounters who the audience could only presume as her live-in lover who shoos him away with his look of death. Right out the gate, Stéphanie’s fate is dependent on the men she keeps around her.

After the tragic on-the-job accident, which severed her legs and left her wheelchair-bound, we’re left to assume that at this point, by the way things have already been going with her, that she’d just crumble and spend the rest of the movie in tears. A once seductive woman who could get any guy she wanted (or needed) was left alone, crippled and seemingly half the person she once was.

Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) in Rust and Bone
That is, until she recalls her guy-on-retainer Alain, who’s moved on from his bouncer days to become a gym worker. That’s when Stéphanie’s story becomes essentially the betterment of his, which details a completely apathetic dad who’s inexplicably careless about his son and everything else in his life (including Stéphanie). He later haphazardly pursues a career as a street fighter. So of course she has to sign on to be his manager, securing herself in his life after several failed attempts to be his girlfriend. Meanwhile, throughout most the movie the audience is left in the dark about Alain’s feelings towards Stéphanie. His chemistry with her seems more mechanical and authoritative rather than her more needy desire.

Though Stéphanie’s new self-made job finally gives her purpose again, it comes off as another way to get closer to him and fit into his life. It just becomes an exhaustive attempt to create an empowered rehabilitated female character by counterbalancing her with the male character. It’s unfair for the character and counterproductive to the shrinking theme in the film — rebuilding a broken woman.

That aside, however significant, Cotillard’s portrayal is steadfast and deliberate. Her aggressively passive aggressive approach to the character wrangles over some of the more minor flaws about the way she was written, leaving the end result that much more impressive. And Schoenaerts, as annoying a character as he plays, delivers a unapologetic performance that is punctuated by the movie’s single glimmer of nuance. Together the two elevate the disappointing story, but the remains of what they had to work with still permeate the rest of the film.

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Candice Frederick is a former Essence magazine editor and an NABJ award-winning journalist. She is also the co-host of “Cinema in Noir” and the film blogger for Reel Talk. Follow her on Twitter.

Foreign Film Week: As a Collector Loves His Most Prized Item: ‘Gabrielle’ (2005)

Isabelle Huppert stars in Gabrielle
Guest post written by Amanda Civitello
Gabrielle is a beautifully complex film, the kind of movie that begs to be watched with attention. Starring the unparalleled Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, who each deliver spellbinding performances, and based on the short story “The Return” by Joseph Conrad, Gabrielle tells the story of a well-to-do woman, the wife of a successful businessman in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris, who one afternoon makes up her mind to leave her husband, writes him a note to that effect, leaves – and then, three hours later, returns. It’s a film with disconcertingly ambiguous characters who alternately elicit frustration, antipathy, disgust, and sympathy from the audience. There isn’t really a heroine to this film, but neither is there an anti-hero; the strength of Gabrielle is in its rendering of utterly perplexing, thoroughly human characters. Patrice Chéreau could not have chosen a better pair of actors to anchor his film. Huppert and Greggory shine in roles that rely primarily on non-verbal acting, embodying their characters with achingly subtle realism. The film suffers from some stylistic problems – it’s sometimes difficult, for example, to know what Chéreau intends when the film switches abruptly from black and white to color – but is, ultimately, a beautifully shot and well-acted film whose complex, disquieting story is all the more harrowing couched as it is in such lovely photography.
We are introduced to our eponymous protagonist in Gabrielle‘s opening scenes: we meet her through the eyes of the antagonist: her husband Jean. We learn why he chose his wife – her impassivity being her chief attribute – and we observe her. We watch her across the dinner table as he watches her each evening; we appraise her as he does; we do all this without hearing her say a single word. She is objectified and we are as guilty of her objectification as her husband. Though he takes pride in his reserved stoicism, he nevertheless insists on having fallen in love with his wife. Later, however, he qualifies this: “I love her as a collector loves his most prized item. Once acquired, it becomes his sole reason to live.” But Gabrielle isn’t his reason to live, of course: he’s not motivated by love or desire for his wife, but rather by the desire to possess her. Having won her, he wants to keep her; it’s meaningful that the room which he enters after pronouncing these words is essentially a sculpture gallery: busts of beautiful women, perhaps won at auction, which Jean would certainly love to keep. Jean’s love, further, is lacking in intimacy, which is not to say that it’s lacking in sex. He deems his desire “assuaged” and that they “know each other enough,” but that he insists on their sharing a bedroom. He says this with a degree of pride in the fact that it’s he who wants to share a bedroom with his wife, but of course, it’s not out of love for her – it’s just another manifestation of his almost obsessive possessiveness. He goes so far as to equate the sharing of their bedroom with the sharing of a grave; he wants to keep his Gabrielle. 
Gabrielle, in these opening scenes, is very much an ice queen, for all that she’s a consummate hostess. We learn, however, that she does have interests outside of entertaining: Jean acquiesces to her desire to “give her individuality fair play,” and he finances her philanthropic efforts to fund a newspaper and goes along with her evening Salons. He’s pleased with his investment when the newspaper turns a profit, but, as before, his pride in her is possessiveness trussed up as love.
Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory)

But Gabrielle is not precisely a sainted, long-suffering martyr, and it’s revealed that she was as coolly calculated in her decision to marry Jean as he was in his. In a brilliant use of cinematic parallelism, Chéreau turns the tables of the opening scenes on Gabrielle, so that she is the one watching, instead of being watched. She observes her servants as hawkishly, as silently as her husband studied her over dinner. “You’re devoted,” she declares to the young women attending her before her bath, “but you don’t enter my life.” Jean might have said the same words about Gabrielle herself in the film’s opening scenes, and the viewer has the sense that while Gabrielle is addressing her maids, the faraway look to her expression and the listless monotone of her voice mean that she might very well be speaking about her husband.

So Gabrielle is a beautiful, fragile-looking woman, who decides to leave her husband for her lover and then, perplexingly, chooses to return. Perhaps she never meant to permanently leave: perhaps the idea of leaving, the act of stepping through the door and venturing just a bit before turning homewards, was enough. What matters, of course, is that she chose to return to her husband. Jean wants an explanation, but Gabrielle isn’t one to justify herself. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a charged scene in which Jean confronts her angrily – then tells her, somewhat grudgingly, that she has his forgiveness. Gabrielle immediately bursts out laughing, and Jean is confused and enraged by her reaction. She laughs because she hasn’t apologized, perhaps because she doesn’t want his forgiveness and certainly because she doesn’t feel she needs it. He protests, his magnanimity patently insincere; her laughter grows more maniacal. Infuriated, he grabs a glass of water and tosses it in her face. Gabrielle blinks, silenced, and Huppert sinks ever so slightly back against the cushions, her expression regaining the impenetrable passivity from the film’s early scenes, this time laced with a practically tangible misery.
Perhaps some of her melancholy derives from those who try to convince her that her decision to leave and return was anything but her own. First Jean, who thinks she’s taken leave of her senses; then Yvonne, the maid, who argues that Gabrielle is not at fault because Jean had allowed a man into his home who didn’t “respect the rules.” Gabrielle is so sadly resigned to her fate in part because no one, not even her servants, accords her the recognition that she did something of her own will. We discover, over the course of her discussion with Yvonne, that she took up with her lover because he made her happy, at least for a time, and because she fell in love. The fact that she recognized the impetuosity of her choices and chose to return to her unhappy marriage doesn’t nullify her three hours of independence. But faced with such a dismissal of her feelings, it’s not surprising that the fight seems to leave her. In a further blow, she’s denied the recognition of her actions, the acknowledgement of her agency, by maid and husband alike.
At dinner, that evening, Jean expresses his determination to forget the incident entirely, but his generosity, his forgiveness, is passively aggressive, and when Gabrielle finally offers him some insight into her thinking, he’s angrily dismissive. Gabrielle explains that she suffered when he left her alone after their marriage, that she was disillusioned and disappointed by it. “And look at the new Gabrielle,” Jean says, dismissively. “It’s not much of an improvement.” Resolved, Gabrielle enlightens him as to the reason for her return: she knew that he would take her back. She anticipated his reaction – the anger, the insistence on forgetting the afternoon – and returned, safe in the knowledge that he would accept her back, that she would continue to live as the socially prominent wife of Jean Hervey because he would so fear the social ostracization that would ensue.
Gabrielle is a strong woman, of course; she does know her own mind and acts accordingly. She pursues the relationship with her lover (incidentally the editor of the Herveys’ newspaper) because of her own desires and passions. Can she be faulted for falling in love, and pursuing it? Pursuing it while married isn’t right, of course, and Gabrielle is clever enough to know that, but a female character, in a period piece, who does something simply because she wants to is refreshing. Gabrielle Hervey is an interesting character in a genre in which many female characters are simply quite bland. She’s a strong woman, then, but not an especially nice one.
At their Salon the following evening, Jean corners Gabrielle during a vocal recital, detailing how he will torment her with guilt until he feels that ‘his’ Gabrielle has returned, at which time he may or may not tell her that her suffering has ended. Unimpressed, Gabrielle retorts that she sees his appreciation of her suffering, and therefore, her mask of sadness will be the only face he sees, even when she is no longer miserable. The moment in which Jean tossed water in Gabrielle’s face seemed, at the time, to be entirely out of character is now revealed to be but the harbinger of further, more serious abuse to come.

Jean threatens Gabrielle

It all comes to a head after the Salon: as the party disbands, Gabrielle puts on her evening cape and makes as if to leave. Jean grabs her violently, demanding that she not go to him. But she wasn’t going to her lover, she declares: she was leaving alone. Finally, in the moments that follow, each of them sat on the floor opposite the other – with Jean having practically wrestled her there in the first place – we learn why Gabrielle decided to leave and return. It’s not as simple as banking on her husband’s good nature: “when you don’t matter,” she says, “you can come and go.” She was a woman trapped in a marriage in which she felt unseen; she was a nonentity. She left, we realize, not just out of passion, but out of desperation; she returns not out of love for her husband or remorse for her infidelity, but because her life with Jean is easier. She knows her role; she knows what he expects from her, and she knows what she expects from him, and chooses that. Her decisions have the air of deliberation and calculation about them; we have the sense that she, up until this point, believed as we did in Jean’s placidity.

Throughout the film, Huppert’s Gabrielle maintains her even tone of voice and her expression of sad resignation, conveying Gabrielle’s changing emotions with only the subtlest of changes in expression. But Jean is enraged by this, and the sight of Gabrielle’s lover at their Salon, and the knowledge of their lovemaking pushes him over the edge. [Trigger warning.] In a terrible moment, Jean rips away the bodice of Gabrielle’s dress and forces up her skirt, and rapes her against the stone staircase. With a final shout, Gabrielle runs away, her steps echoing loudly on the stone floors. Huppert and Greggory handle the moment very carefully: this is an utterly terrifying scene in an otherwise slow-paced film, and it has much to do with the sudden onslaught of emotion from the two leads.
He returns to the bedroom the next morning, seemingly broken, yet offering excuses and wondering, impossibly, if she still loves him. It’s to Greggory’s credit that Jean is believable in this moment. Practically in response, with an utterly tired expression, Gabrielle moves to the bed, reclines, and pulls her clothes away from her body. “Come,” she says. “Lie down. Perhaps if you did, I could…now.” Despite her words, there’s nothing at all desperate about her in these moments: she’s a woman in control, who meets Jean’s gaze challengingly, who bares herself because she chooses to, she who, we come to learn, had been reticent to make love with her husband; who takes control of her sexuality and leverages it. Finally, it’s Gabrielle who sets the tone, in an utter reversal of the movie’s early scenes. He sits beside her and his hand trembles on her breasts; he lies on top of her; she doesn’t respond in the slightest to his touch. He wrenches himself away, his face twisted with emotion, in stark contrast to Gabrielle’s mask of placidity. “You could, like this, without love?” he asks, stunned. “Yes,” Gabrielle replies, simply. It’s a scene that’s incredibly difficult to watch, thanks to Huppert’s commanding performance. While before we gazed at her across the dinner table, admiring her, studying her, objectifying her, now it’s Gabrielle who dares us to look by offering herself to Jean – and to the audience’s gaze. And this time, we look away.
In the end, in the film as in the story, it’s Jean who leaves, slamming the door of the great house behind him, never to return; does that mean that it’s Gabrielle who won? The melancholic resignation that pervades the film’s final scenes seems to suggest that there are no winners in a story like Gabrielle: there are no winners just as there are no heroes in a marriage that falls apart because of the failings of both husband and wife.

Gabrielle
Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She has recently written on Jacques Derrida and feminist philosopher Sarah Kofman for The Ellipses Project and has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up with ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’

Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

Guest post written by Lou Flandrin.

This masterpiece by Jacques Demy is definitely the most important movie of my childhood. Part of it is probably due to the hours I spent listening to the cheerful singing while going away on vacation with my family. Singing in the car is the best remedy to car sickness and boredom, and so the whole family would happily sing along these tunes about dreams, true love, and living life to the fullest.

While I love this movie because of the catchy lyrics, colourful clothes and the giddy state in which it turns me, I also appreciate its depiction of women’s lives and family bonds. I am grateful to have had these depictions to look up to when I was growing up, of sisters and friends who didn’t fight against each other, but worked together towards their dreams to have an artistic career and to find happiness.

The plot of the movie is quite simple: the main characters, Delphine and Solange, are twins who are tired of their provincial lives and decide to go to Paris to start their artistic career. As they plan their departure, the summer fair is settling in the beautiful city of Rochefort – which was painted in pastel colours for the movie – and fair workers, sailors and musicians will cross their path, webs of stories will get intertwined, resulting in a wonderful puzzle of emotions, songs, and choreographed happiness.

A Celebration of Love in All its States

While this movie is about soul mates finding each other, it is above all a celebration of love in general, love of life and of all the little things that makes the world so amazing. A perfect illustration of this is the song that the twins perform for the fair’s big show, “La Chanson d’un Jour d’été” which is all about loving life, and as they sing it: “loving the world in order to be happy.” This positive philosophy is a recurring leitmotif in the movie. Two fair workers – played by George Chakiris and Grover Dale – contribute to the theme by singing about the joys of travelling and living life to the fullest in every city they visit, “running from one happiness to the next.” With such a positive outlook, it’s no wonder this movie makes me want to smile and dance around like a maniac!

Being in love is obviously still a major theme, but it is presented as a complement to this love of life and freedom. Most of the characters are on a quest to find their true love in their own different ways. Yvonne, the twins’ mother, is longing for her lost love, whom she rejected years before because of his ridiculous last name. Andy, an American composer, is feeling incomplete after spending his whole life focusing on his musical career. Simon Dame, the dissed lover with a ridiculous name, is now back in Rochefort when he once was in love with Yvonne. Maxence, a young artist doing his military service in Rochefort, dreams about his feminine ideal, painting her portrait that looks eerily like Delphine.

Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) discovers Maxence’s painting

There is no distinction between a feminine or masculine depiction of love, as lovers’ voices share the same intensity, and their songs echo each other. Love “is the sole authority” and erases the discriminations of gender, social class or even moral virtue.

The twins have their own expectations about love. While it is no secret that they have had their share of lovers – as sung in their famous “Chanson des Jumelles,” they are now both looking for someone to share their lives with, and will take action towards this goal. At the beginning of the movie, Delphine dumps her phony and creepy boyfriend Lancien in an amazing break-up song, in which she reproaches him of treating her like “just another doll” and not understanding anything about her dreams. Lancien gets a few lines in the song as well, but he misses the point entirely. He mistakes his desire to own Delphine with love, and will try repeatedly to get her back, including with a poor attempt to convince her that she would need someone like him to look after her in Paris. But Delphine knows better than that, and replies that she never wants to see him again. Good riddance!

A Celebration of Friendship and Family Ties

What I like about this movie is that it’s not all about true love, as friends and family are shown as equally important parts of life. The two sisters live together in harmony, they confide in each other, share their joys and fears, and sing to each other about everything. Another interesting duo is that of the two girls who were supposed to sing and dance at the fair. After discussing it with each other, they decide to leave Etienne and Bill, the two fair workers, because they are tired of being exploited and want to live their own lives. Sure, they have their own superficial reasons (Bill doesn’t have blue eyes, sailors are better lovers…) but still, the message is out there, they want to free themselves and they do it together.

Guys are not excluded from this friendship pattern. Etienne and Bill have known each other for years, they travel together and share the same adventures and heartbreaks. They sing about their undying friendship, describing themselves as penniless knights with hearts of gold running from cities to cities. When the girls leave them for blue-eyed sailors, they echo their previous song about freedom, and leave the scene smiling at each other. Later on, when they very awkwardly ask the twins if they want to sleep with them and get rejected, they sing together about their bad luck with women.

True bros wear tight jeans and white boots, it is known. (George Chakiris and Grover Dale)

As for family ties, they are not limited to the sibling relationship between Delphine and Solange. Their mother Yvonne has raised three children on her own, sacrificing her life in order to help her family become well-read. She owns a café, and spends her days behind the counter. While she is at work all the time, in what she calls her “aquarium,” the café becomes the family home. The twins come and go to chat, Yvonne’s father spends his time in a corner constructing models, and Booboo, the youngest son, is always brought from the café to school and vice-versa.

A Celebration of Art

Art is what allows the characters to escape the mundanity of their daily lives, as when Maxence evades from the army barracks every night to paint in his studio. Art and love are pictured as complementary. While Andy is a successful composer, he feels a void, and realises that Solange might be the one who can fill it. They fall in love at first sight, and their idyll is written in F-sharp minor, just like Solange’s concerto that she accidentally drops on the ground when they meet, and that will further charm Andy.

Andy (Gene Kelly) singing about his love for Solange and her concerto

Art can be used negatively, for example in the case of Lancien, Delphine’s ex, who owns a gallery, and “creates” abstract paintings by shooting at balloons full of paint over white canvasses. Unlike the other characters, his art is depicted as destructive, and is echoed in his negative discourses on how he wants to own Delphine and control her life.

A Celebration of Freedom

What makes all the characters of this charming tale so unique is that they are all striving for freedom, and taking action to achieve their independence. Delphine doesn’t want to become Lancien’s doll and decides to leave to Paris to become famous on her own. While her reasons were questionable, Yvonne’s refusal to marry Simon can also be interpreted as a way to stay independent: she didn’t want to become Madame Dame, and chose to struggle on her own rather than becoming his wife.

Throughout the movie, the twins keep saying what comes to their mind, and doing what they want. When the fair workers come to the twins’ door to ask them to take part in their show, they imply that they need their help to go to Paris, which scandalises the sisters. They don’t want to be patronised and don’t want to be mere substitutes either, which is why they will participate to the show in their own way. Delphine buys revealing dresses that she thinks are beautiful, and Solange wonders: “Aren’t you afraid we might look slutty?” Delphine dismisses the comment, and they end up wearing those dresses on stage, showing everybody that they do not care about what people might think. Similarly, Solange couldn’t care less that her dress’ lining is showing, despite everybody insisting on reminding her. The twins’ indifference to other people’s judgement is also seen in their anthem, in which they proudly sing that they were born from an unknown father, and that they had lovers at a very young age.

Who doesn’t love characters who sing in the face of slut-shaming? (Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac)

Freedom is celebrated through the characters’ ability to travel the world to their fancy, like the fair workers who are happiest when they travel, or the sisters who decide to try their luck in Paris. Lack of freedom, for instance in Yvonne’s case, stuck in her “aquarium”, is depicted as the culmination of misery. She evades by dreaming of Pacific beaches, and will only be happy when she manages to get out of her café and find her former lover in front of Booboo’s school.

The musical has some darker notes, with the side story of a sadistic killer who killed a woman and cut her in little pieces because she refused his love for 40 years. Lancien’s obsession with Delphine echoes that of the killer, and we can only hope that he will not follow her to Paris to copycat the tragic event.

Paint Life in Pastel Tones

Haters will diss the cheesy dialogue, the ridiculous plots devices used to make characters miss or meet each other, and the overly cheerful singing. People might also argue that this movie is offering a false depiction of life, in which true love can always be found if one sings about with enough passion, and roams prettily the streets of France while dancing in colourful clothing.

But this very naivety is what makes Les Demoiselles de Rochefort so brilliant. Everything in the movie makes it clear that it is only a wonderful tale, far from reality. If you look at it that way, and decide to immerse yourself in Demy’s pastel singing city, you will end up happier and confident that while real life doesn’t have the same splendour, the ideals it promotes are very real.

Lou Flandrin is a French graduate in languages and international politics. Currently living in Chengdu (China), she is a volunteer translator and author at Global Voices Online, and sometimes tweets about Sichuanese food, robots, and other stuff.

Foreign Film Week: ‘The World is Ours,’ A Feminist Film

Guest post written by Eugenia Andino Lucas. 

[Original post en Español follows English version.]
Last summer, a Spanish film had a modest success at the cinema: El Mundo es Nuestro (The World Is Ours), directed by Alfonso Sánchez, starring himself and Alberto López. The origin of this film is in a series of shorts released on Youtube, produced in the simplest way and showing the solid education in independent theater of the performers; one fixed camera and two guys, sitting in iconic places of Seville, chatting about this and that and nothing in particular. The one thing setting them apart from regular stand up comedy was that in each of the first three shorts, the two friends were characterized as a local stereotype: in “This isn’t what it used to be,” canis (somewhere between working-class and petty criminals), 
The first of the original shorts (unsubtitled Spanish).
That’s the way it is stars upper-class, conservative men with a very distinct set of local idiosyncrasies, and It was different, back then has hippies, for lack of a better word (in a different country or year they would have been hipsters: guys of middle-class origin with a snobbish mix of liberal values). As I write, the original video has more than 1,268,000 Youtube views and the second one, more than 2,625,000. The canis and the posh guys appeared in different sequels, and after some intensive and creative crowdfunding, Alfonso Sánchez directed his film, with the original petty criminals, Culebra and Cabeza, as protagonists. 
The World Is Ours
The plot is not the most original in the world: Seville’s favorite crooks plan a bank robbery that goes wrong when a mysterious third man takes the entire bank office hostage, including them, and demands to appear on TV to give a very important message. As a fan of the original shorts, I went to see the film. And at the box office, I took a look at what other options the multiplex was giving:
  • A woman wants to kill another one because she’s younger and prettier.
  • Two men save the world from the evil plans of another man.
  • A prison mutiny. It’s a man’s prison and there is one woman as hostage. Naturally.
  • A war flick with big macho guys.
  • A handful of brats give a party.
  • If he stalks you, it means he loves you.
  • Girl is infatuated with guy who still remembers his ex. Said ex is baaaaaad and meeeeeeean.
And The World is Ours, a film that I was looking forward to, but which didn’t seem very promising from a feminist perspective. In fact, I assumed the film worked on the premise that I don’t exist, because in the Youtube videos, women are entirely absent, as characters and even as mentions. Luckily, I was wrong. If feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings, The World is Ours is a wonderfully feminist film. 
When was the last time that you saw a film that didn’t just pass the Bechdel test, but also had female characters that were not victims of sexual violence? How many films do you remember in which some of those female characters were simultaneously kind and clever? How many films with supporting female characters that aren’t the hero’s girlfriend? 
A woman enjoying lunch. It is not a major plot point.
In The World is Ours, you can find almost anything you could wish in a comedy portrait of women in Southern Spain. First of all, quantity: male and female roles with dialogue are in a 13:8 proportion. Not bad!
Characterizations show a bit of everything: people are kind or disgusting, clever, naive, or stupid. People, men and women, do their jobs with varying levels of honesty and efficiency. The problems shown are human, and often universal. Consider these; some of them feel particularly local to me, but anyone could relate:
  • An exploited intern.
  • Unemployed, on the dole, with bits of illegal work on the side (think British social comedy).
  • Working for two because your partner is unemployed. Being partly proud and partly resentful of your head-of-the-family position.
  • Queer and gradually out of the closet.
  • A wormy, servile coward; bully to the weak.
  • A good, rational professional adjusting badly after a transfer at work. It’s not really their fault. A bit like in Northern Exposure.
  • Friendship from the cradle, passionate and unconditional.
  • Someone whose grey, boring job is embittering every aspect of their lives.
Five hostages.
Can you guess the sex of any of the characters from my descriptions? You can’t? That’s the best test of this film’s feminism: if we took all of them and switched, it would work just as well.
It’s not perfect, but it’s so enjoyable that I don’t care. In the words of my husband, who saw the film with me and doesn’t have any gender studies on his CV, “it’s a film with real women, who are human.” Thanks, Alfonso Sánchez, and the rest of the team.
Culebra and Cabeza.

El Mundo es Nuestro, esa película feminista.

Estaba yo en la puerta del cine para entrar a ver El Mundo es Nuestro y me fijé en lo que había en la cartelera. Os doy un resumen rapidito:
  • Una mujer quiere matar a otra porque es más guapa.
  • Dos hombres salvan el mundo del plan de otro hombre.
  • Un motín en una cárcel. De hombres. Con una mujer de rehén, claro.
  • Una de guerra con soldados machotes.
  • Unos niñatos dan una fiesta.
  • Si te acosa es que te quiere.
  • Chica pierde el culo por un muchacho que todavía se acuerda de su ex. La ex es mala y tontita.
Y El Mundo es Nuestro, una película que no prometía mucho como reflejo de que yo existo. Porque en los vídeos on Youtube de mundoficción las mujeres están ausentes, como personajes o como menciones. Afortunadamente, me equivocaba. Si el feminismo es creer que las mujeres somos seres humanos, El Mundo es Nuestro es una película maravillosamente feminista.
¿Cuándo fue la última vez que viste una película con más de dos personajes femeninos, ninguna de las cuales era víctima de violación, ni de maltrato doméstico? ¿Cuántas en la que algunas de esas mismas mujeres son listas y buenas personas a la vez? ¿Cuántas en las que los personajes femeninos son algo más que la novia del protagonista?
Pues El Mundo es Nuestro tiene casi todo lo que se podría desear en un retrato cómico de las mujeres en España. Para empezar, la cantidad: los personajes masculinos y femeninos con diálogo están en la bonita proporción de 13 a 8. No está mal.
Sobre sus caracterizaciones, entre ellos y ellas hay de todo: gente indeseable y encantadora, gente lista y tonta, gente que hace su trabajo con dosis variables de ética y de eficacia. Los problemas son humanos, y universales: ser un becario explotado. Estar en paro. Trabajar por dos porque quien está en paro es tu pareja. Salir del armario. Ser un pelotillero cobarde y miserable. Sentirte fuera de lugar en una cultura ajena, después de un traslado por motivos de trabajo. ¿A que no adivinas cuáles de estas situaciones corresponden a un hombre o a una mujer en la película? Ese es el mejor test: con todos los sexos cambiados, la película funcionaría igual de bien.
No es perfecta, pero se disfruta tanto que da igual. En palabras de quien me acompañó al cine, “una película con mujeres de verdad, que son personas”. Gracias, Alfonso Sánchez, y a todos los demás enteristas.
Eugenia Andino Lucas is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Spain. She’s also working on a PhD on Gender Violence in the novels of Charles Dickens. You can follow her on twitter: @laguiri and on her blog: eugeniaandino.bachpress.org.