Author: Amber Leab

Director Spotlight: Jane Campion

Filmmaker Jane Campion
Jane Campion is one of only four women ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award (other nominees have been Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, and Lina Wertmüller). In addition, Campion won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Piano–a film for which she also won two Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival, an Independent Spirit Award, and a Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) Award, among others. Her latest film is 2009’s Bright Star. She has directed numerous films, shorts, and TV movies, and served as a writer and producer.
An exerpt from Campion’s bio, from IMDb:
Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian School of Film and Television. Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.

Here are a selection of her films and critical responses to each.

Sweetie(1989)
Campion’s first feature-length film, Sweetie, is often lauded as a feminist classic, though Campion herself denies a feminist perspective on the film. Here is a brief plot summary, also from IMDb:
Explores sisters, in their twenties, their parents, and family dysfunctions. Kay is gangly and slightly askew, consulting a fortune teller and then falling in love with a man because of a mole on his face and a lock of hair; then, falling out of love when he plants a tree in their yard. Sweetie is plump, imperious, self-centered, and seriously mentally ill. The parents see none of the illness, seeing only their cute child. Kay mainly feels exasperation at her sister’s impositions. Slowly, the film exposes how the roots of Sweetie’s illness have choked Kay’s own development. Can she be released?

Though the above summary alludes to “the roots of Sweetie’s illness,” this–and many reviews–ignore that the root of the her illness and Kay’s stunted sexuality is their father’s sexual abuse of the mentally-challenged Sweetie since her childhood (and continuing in adulthood). The theme is addressed subtly, and smartly, and the constant presence of a vague yet dark past imbues the film with a sense of tension and foreboding. (Also, the women’s body types aren’t nearly as important as the summary oddly makes it seem.)
From Roger Ebert:
The first time I saw it, at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, I didn’t know what to make of it. I doubted if I “liked” it and yet it was certainly a work of talent. There was something there. I didn’t feel much from it, though; the experience seemed primarily cerebral. Then six months later I saw “Sweetie” a second time, and suddenly there it all was, laid out in blood and passion on the screen, the emotional turmoil of a family’s life.

 Watch the trailer:

The Piano (1993)

The Piano is likely Campion’s most famous, and certainly most lauded film to date. Both female lead and supporting actors won Oscars (you can watch their speeches here, including one from the adorable 11-year-old Anna Paquin). The IMDb plot summary doesn’t really do the film justice, but here it is:
A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she’s soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.
Many reviewers, including Alan Stone, writing for the Boston Review, were quick to point out that The Piano is more than just “a feminist tract,” trying to gloss over the fact that it is, actually, a fantastic feminist fable–and that fact alone might make it worth your viewing time. Reviewer Vincent Canby was a little less interested in distancing the film–and himself–from feminism when he wrote:
Like “Sweetie,” Ms. Campion’s marvelous first feature, “The Piano” is never predictable, though it is seamless. It’s the work of a major writer and director. The film has the enchanted manner of a fairy tale. Even the setting suggests a fairy tale: the New Zealand bush, with its lush and rain-soaked vegetation, is as strange as the forest in which Flora says her mother was struck dumb.

Trips through this primeval forest are full of peril. When Ada goes off to her first assignation with Baines, she appears to be as innocent as Red Riding Hood. Yet this Red Riding Hood falls head over heels in love with the wolf, who turns out to be not a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but a recklessly romantic prince with dirty fingernails.

 Watch the trailer:

The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
With an official “rotten” rating from Rotten Tomatoes, this adaptation of Henry James’ novel of the same name (first published in 1881) may or may not have been the best follow up to a multi-Oscar winner. However, Campion’s acclaim allowed her a budget for this star-studded period literary adaptation. Frankly, I like this kind of movie–and even this version’s more experimental elements. It’s smart and has a feminist question at its heart. If you’re not familiar with the book, here’s a very brief plot synopsis:
Isabel Archer, an American heiress and free thinker, travels to Europe to find herself.
Instead of faithfully reiterating James’s novel, Ms. Campion chooses to reimagine it as a Freudian fever dream. Fantasies intrude; prison bars or doorways or mirrors offer tacit commentary; the story’s well-bred heroine abruptly sniffs her boot or tries to hide an undergarment hanging on a door. With startling intuitiveness, Ms. Campion traces the tension between polite, guarded characters and blunt visual symbols of their inner turmoil.
Watch the trailer:

In the Cut (2003)
Receiving worse reviews than Portrait, 2003’s In the Cut stars Meg Ryan playing against “America’s Sweetheart” type. Was this the reason for the harsh reviews–people unable to accept Ryan in a grittier role? I can’t say for sure, having not seen the movie, but it looks dark and creepy. The synopsis:
Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, a self-determined woman living in New York City–as if to test the limits of her own safety–propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison. Soon she grows increasingly wary about the motives of every man with whom she has contact–and about her own.

Ann Hornaday, writing for The Washington Post, says

These tricky sexual dynamics clearly interest Campion more than the thriller elements of “In the Cut,” in which Frannie has a tendency to walk into dark basements and get into strange men’s cars at a rate clearly disproportionate to her intelligence. The red herrings are trotted out almost by rote, with no finesse or subtlety, as are frequent outbursts of gratuitous gore. By the movie’s ludicrous conclusion, viewers will have abandoned all hope of getting the mature thriller they might have paid to see.

But if “In the Cut” fails as a thriller, it’s not such a write-off as a psychosexual portrait of a certain kind of single Manhattan woman at the turn of the new century. With its restless, jittery camera, the movie captures the jangly paranoia of a city that is often equally tantalizing and threatening; Frannie responds in kind, with her own contradictory sexual persona, which at certain times is defiantly autonomous and at others almost timidly girlish. A “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” for the post-9/11 age (the remnants of that tragedy form one of the movie’s many visual leitmotifs), “In the Cut” focuses on the darker face of the classic New York romance.

Watch the trailer:

Bright Star (2009)

Campion returned to critical acclaim with Bright Star, the story of poet John Keats’ first love and subject of his poem “Bright Star,” Fanny Brawne. The film is based on their 3-year romance.

Dana Stevens, writing for Slate, says of Bright Star

Keats proves as tough to demythologize as Marilyn Monroe: He died so young, his life was so tragic, and the small body of work he left behind is so incomparable, that any depiction of his short life is bound to be tinged with idealization. 

That’s why Campion was smart to make her film less about Keats than about Fanny Brawne, the fashionable, flirtatious young woman who captivated him in the spring of 1818 and lived next door to him in Hampstead for the last two years of his life. Fanny, as played by the up-and-coming Australian actress Abbie Cornish, is a curious heroine. 

Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek says

Poetry gets a bad rap almost everywhere: In school, where many of us read it because we have to; in life, where most of us don’t read it at all; and in the movies, where it’s often quoted by the most pompous character or, worse yet, in a self-serious voice-over. Even people who like poetry well enough often fail to revisit poems they once connected with as young students.

If you’re in that last group, Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” just may be the film to reconnect you. And if you’re not, the film works on its own as an unfussy, passionate and gently erotic love story that never tips into sentimentality.

Watch the trailer:

Preview: Meek’s Cutoff – A Feminist Western?

Shirley Henderson, Zoe Kazan, and Michelle Williams star in Meek’s Cutoff

I’ve never really talked about my love for Westerns here, or all of my jumbled ideas about the genre and feminism (someday I’ll write a long post about it, or an essay, or a book). But, let me try to (briefly) sum up my interest here, and express how excited I am about Meek’s Cutoff.
The Western genre is traditionally tied up in all kinds of rugged masculinity, and of all film genres, maybe best exemplifies the dominant way the United States collectively imagines itself: sturdy, adventurous, self sufficient, brave, and, well, pretty butch. The problem is, however, that this narrative leaves out a significant number of people, and a significant portion of the story. The Western (and the story of the U.S. West) tries to be the story of the United States itself, and reveals ideology so clearly where it fails–namely, in its depiction of women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and African-Americans. The genre is, in other words, ripe for retellings and allegory.
Directed by Kelly Reichardt (who also directed Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy), Meek’s Cutoff opens this weekend in New York, followed by a limited-release roll out. The critical consensus is positive, and Reichardt is already being praised for making an artistic and accessible film. Not-so-subtle connections are also being made between the film’s title character and a certain former U.S. president who may have also been overconfident in his ability to lead.

Mahohla Dargis has called the film “unabashedly political,” and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, writes

Having split off from a larger wagon train, the party elected to follow Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), an extravagantly hirsute, self-regardingly loquacious guide who, in his most obvious misjudgment, brings them not to the foothills of the Cascade Mountains but the shores of a great saline lake. Is he “ignorant or just plain evil?” the Williams character asks her husband (Will Patton). “We can’t know. . . . We made our decision,” he tells her. “I don’t blame him for not knowing—I blame him for saying he did,” she replies, establishing herself as the party’s moral compass.

In a NYT piece, “Oregon Frontier, from Under a Bonnet,”  Nicolas Rapold writes

“There was a quote I remembered that I had liked when I was 18 or something, that popped into my head: ‘I’ll go where my own nature would be leading,’ ” Ms. Williams said of her character, Emily Tetherow. The verse, by Emily Brontë, which continues, “It vexes me to choose another guide,” proves peculiarly apt for Mrs. Tetherow, who emerges as Meek’s prime skeptic and becomes an unusually vocal opponent. The actual diaries of women migrating West were also a source of inspiration for Ms. Williams. She said she marveled at the effort spent on writing at “the end of the longest day you could imagine.”

The forbearance and point of view in the journals comes out in Ms. Reichardt’s shading of events through the women’s perspective. Besides the constant visual metaphor of the obscuring bonnets, there are the intervening moments devoted to their chores (laundry, grinding coffee) and wide shots from their point of view that suggest their exclusion from major decision making, like when Meek and the men consult upon arriving at a lake that proves unpotable. But it’s also Mrs. Tetherow who first spies an Indian (Rod Rondeaux) who becomes another competing voice of authority as they drift along in increasing distress and disagreement.

Watch the official preview:

The Flick Off: Bored to Death

The first season of HBO’s Bored to Death had me–you guessed it–bored to death.

Honestly, the last thing we really need is another show about white male hipsterism. Set in Brooklyn? Check. Protagonist is a whiny artist type? Check. Whiny artist-type best friend? Check. Kooky outsider friend? Check. Bromance-style hijinks? Check. One-dimensional women? Check. Women who inhibit the protagonist and his best friend? Check. Money not an issue? Check. You get the picture, right?

Don’t get me wrong: Ted Danson is very funny in this show, even if he is just playing a less-evil Arthur Frobisher (from the fantastic Damages), replacing coke-fueled corporate crime with pot-fueled magazine-editor slickness and humor. That’s about the only compliment I can give this snooze-fest.

The premise of Bored to Death is a bit weak, yet has potential: With nothing else to do besides write his second novel, character Jonathan Ames (named by real-life writer Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman) offers himself for hire on Craigslist as an unlicensed investigator. Jonathan only drinks white wine now since his girlfriend henpecked him about drinking, he’s really sensitive, and, come on, he’s a lovable hipster. FEEL SORRY FOR HIM! The fact that his cases are small and insignificant (the case of the stolen skateboard, finding a woman whose workplace and stage name are already known) isn’t the problem; the problem is that they mean nothing. Jonathan is such a boring person that he investigates other people’s problems to mine them for story ideas, since, you know, he’s blocked and his second book is due. At least I think that’s why he’s doing it. Also, it’s a semi-interesting way to procrastinate (it could be a hilarious way to procrastinate, but the show rarely, if ever, reaches those heights). Another HBO show, which shares the premise of an unlicensed detective investigating often small crimes, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, has purpose and smarts. This unlicensed detective show is all about the ego of Jonathan Ames.

Here’s the real reason for the flick off: the women are awful. They aren’t bad people—we’re not dealing with the galling misogyny of Hollywood blockbusters here—but they’re so lazily written that I can’t believe HBO, usually so keen on characters, greenlit this show. Bored isn’t interested in who its female characters really are, as its main characters aren’t interested in anything but their own egos. Ray (Galifianakis) complains about his girlfriend’s obsession with their lack of intimacy, and she regularly suggests ridiculous solutions, including Ray getting a colonic, Ray going to therapy, and Ray giving her timed massages—yet she still gives him “an allowance” so he has money for essentials like weed. Jonathan’s ex-girlfriend, whom he is still obsessed with, seems to exist only to walk her little white dog while wearing gorgeous lady-hipster outfits and torture him with her beauty of lack of love for him. Guest stints from very funny actresses—including Parker Posey, Kristin Wiig, Jenny Slate, and Bebe Neuwirth as Jonathan’s editor–are utterly wasted. (As is Zach Galifianakis, actually.) These women aren’t there to be funny, or, you know, be people; they appear mostly as male fantasies (smart, beautiful women who would have anything to do with Jonathan and Ray) and nightmares (underage, duplicitous, blackmailing, domineering, hysterical, criminal, etc.)

Every time an interesting concept comes up, the show detours so as to not actually have to deal with said interesting concept. A character doing this would be fine and fitting; the show doing it tells me that the writer (ahem, Ames) is too close to the characters and show. For example, Ray agrees to donate his sperm to a lesbian couple, only to learn that the couple gave him fake names and sold his sperm to twenty-one other couples. This is a funny set up (if you can get past the evil lesbian trope)! So, Jonathan and Ray totally investigate the case, figure out who these women are, and run into all sorts of funny trouble on the way, RIGHT? Um, no. They happen upon a list of women who bought the sperm, and visit these women to see if any are pregnant. One is. Ray is happy? What? Huh? End of episode. What? Yeah, that’s about it.

You might wonder why I even watched the show, knowing it centered on privileged white male characters who think they are funnier and more interesting than they actually are. Good question. I guess I retain hope that such a show might be well written and funny. That maybe such a show could be a humorous examination of characters like these, instead of a blindly sympathetic ego trip. I’m open to giving a lot of things a chance, when maybe I should just skip them. I don’t want to be cynical, though, and HBO has a way of surprising us with its programming. (Take The Sopranos as an example: this show is an indictment of the American upper-middle class, disguised as a show about a mafia family. Granted, it has its own problems, but I never expected to like it as much as I did.)

Bored to Death is ready to begin its third season. Since it is still on the air, I hope it has improved from the first season I watched on DVD. I can’t say I’m optimistic, but since I don’t have premium cable, you might know better than me. So, what did you think of season one? Have you watched subsequent seasons/episodes? What do you think?

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

We do not live in Orwell’s 1984, and there are plenty of words that we can use to insult someone without being ableist.  Is it really so hard to call someone a jackass instead of moron?  There is a cost to the continual usage of these words in a negative fashion, and it is paid by the disabled community, whereas; choosing to stop using ableist words in one’s speech causes no harm at all. Do we really need to know why something is offensive?  Isn’t it enough that someone has said these words hurt, would you please stop using them, without twisting like a pretzel to tell them all the reasons why they are wrong to be offended?

Sucker Punch (review): Fuk Yeah from Flick Filosopher:
Theres this totally hot little blonde babe who is suppose to be all underage and shit even though the actress who plays her Emily Browning is like 23 or whatever. And shes about to get raped by her ugly ass fat fuk of a stepfather this is PG13 and WTF is that all about I want to sucker puch Snyder for not doing this right and hard R so we dont get to see that but thats def whats gonna happen till Baby Doll tries to shoot his ass. Oh and hes gonna try to rape her little sister too and we dont get to see that either but at least you can think about it. Yeah her name is fukkin Baby Doll thats what they call her in the asylm for the mentally insane her stepfather throws her in as opposed to the physically insane which is what all these chicks in the asylum are anyway insanely hot LOL. No fat chicks and no ugly chicks in hottie hospital!

Teaching Boys Feminism from Gender Across Borders:
With every example of women, girls, queer folks, and people of color facing discrimination, marginalization, and violence, boys awaken. White male boys begin to realize the male privilege they have enjoyed in a culture that valorizes powerful white men while boys of color gain language to describe their painful experiences of racism and classism. And each year, without fail, regardless of racial identity or socioeconomic class, the boys—both straight and gay—express their fear of being called a “fag.”

In 1971, Ms. Magazine wrote of “the click! of recognition, that parenthesis of truth around a little thing that completes the puzzle of reality in women’s minds—the moment that brings a gleam to our eyes and means the revolution has begun.” Forty years later, for better or worse, those clicks are still going off. Only today, the trigger is sometimes feminism itself.

Older women want to see more of their sexual desire depicted in film, a survey has suggested, while black and gay people would like to see less of a focus on theirs.

Sixty-one percent of women between the ages of 50 and 75 questioned for a UK Film Council survey of 4,315 people said women of their age were portrayed on the big screen as not having sexual needs or desires. Half said they were comfortable with older women being seen as attractive to younger men. Seven in 10 also felt that their group was generally under-represented in films and that younger women were glamorised.

A still from the upcoming short film that James Franco is making with Harmony Korine, which apparently has something to do with naked women wearing bandana masks. The film is called “Rebel” and who the hell even knows.

By my count, there are at least five attempted rapes in Sucker Punch. When its female characters aren’t fending off rapists, theyʼre being lobotomized, stabbed, imprisoned, sold, shot in the head, forced to strip, or blown up on trains in outer space. Sucker Punch has been pitched as a girl-power epic, but it feels like watching a little boy tear the heads off his sister’s Barbies. After dressing them up in their sexiest outfits and making them fight GI Joe, of course.

Sexism is so yesterday from StampOutSexism.org:
When you’re watching TV and you see an ad like Hoover’s “Floormate Challenge,” does your blood boil? Mine does. Why? Because Hoover–in its infinite, sexist wisdom–thinks it’s okay to “ask ordinary women” to clean their floors using their favorite method, and then re-do the floor using the Hoover product. Um…WOMEN? Why did they only ask women to do this? Why didn’t they ask PEOPLE to clean their floors? Men and women. Because Hoover–at least during my multi-decade long lifetime–has yet to advertise in a non-sexist manner.

Part of what makes Fey’s good jokes into insightful commentaries is the way they draw on and expose an argument’s emotional or psychological underpinnings. In response to men who claim that women are not funny, as Christopher Hitchens notoriously argued in Vanity Fair, Fey writes, “My hat goes off to them. It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.” Her buoyant, manic humor is sometimes the best way to expose and pin down the sheer absurdity of our current sexual politics. She has, for instance, a riff on frequently asked questions about 30 Rock: “Q: Has Tracy Morgan ever French kissed an NBC executive? A: Yes, but only at an official NBC event, and only against her will.”

Being a transgender woman means one has a ‘special’ relationship with gender and with womanhood in particular. For many of us, part of our self-discovery necessarily involves a dawning of pride and acceptance of one’s own gender. I grew up surrounded by media images and socialisation that told me femininity and womanhood were inferior, weaker, undesirable, and should be either avoided or pitied. As a young trans girl trying to find her place in the gendered sun this naturally screwed with my head in many deeply unpleasant ways and fed self-hate in a rather dramatic way. I came out as a feminist when I was 15 because my father’s abuse of my mother put the lie to the notion that sexism was a thing of the past; but that did not click away my own self-loathing and fears regarding acceptance of my gender.

Who Does She Think She Is? from the official film web site:
In a half-changed world, women often feel they need to choose: mothering or working? Your children’s well-being or your own? Who Does She Think She Is?, a documentary by Academy Award winning filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll, features five fierce women who refuse to choose. Through their lives, we explore some of the most problematic intersections of our time: mothering and creativity, partnering and independence, economics and art. The film invites us to consider both ancient legacies of women worshipped as cultural muses and more modern times where most people can’t even name a handful of female artists.

Leave your links in the comments!

Quote of the Day: Rebecca Traister

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women by Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister’s Big Girls Don’t Cry looks at the 2008 election through a feminist lens and, (no surprise), focuses most on primary candidate Hillary Clinton, and later Sarah Palin. The book is, however, much more than just an analysis of the sexism these two women endured. Big Girls Don’t Cry looks at the ways in which the media itself was forced to adapt, particularly to Clinton’s historic run at the presidency. This book is an excellent, smartly written look back at gender politics in 2008. For me, it reopened wounds and ignited anger I felt during the election cycle, when I heard, time and again, painful misogynist commentary coming from our so-called liberal media. However, the book provides a kind of catharsis: if we can look back through Traister’s clear eye, maybe we–individuals and the collective–will change.

The book is especially incisive when discussing how the media–the news media and entertainment realm–itself had to change in reaction to the election, and provided several “Ah ha!” moments for me. 
Here’s an excerpt from her chapter “Pop Culture Warriors.”
If Katie Couric was the nail in Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential coffin, the hammer was Tina Fey. Fey’s deadly impression of Palin was played out over half a dozen sketches for which Fey returned to Saturday Night Live, where she had been the first female head writer and where, in February, she made news with her comedic defense of Hillary Clinton, “Bitch is the new black.” 
[…]
Fey’s take on Palin was serendipitous, prompted by the strong resemblance between the two women. But that likeness was part of what made it groundbreaking: a vice-presidential candidate looked like a famous comedian. A female comedian. And on it went. Hillary Clinton had been played by Poehler for several years. The interview that brought Palin low had been administered by Couric, a woman also played by Poehler. The vice-presidential debate had been moderated by Gwen Ifill, prompting a guest appearance by the inimitable Queen Latifah. Inasmuch as each of the impersonations relied on the amplification of feminine traits–Poehler/Couric’s heavily mascara’d and incessant blinking, Poehler/Hillary’s hyenic laugh, Fey/Palin’s sexy librarianism–in ways that might indeed be sexist or reductive, those characteristics were ripe for amplification only because the objects of political and media parody had high-pitched laughs and wore mascara and pencil skirts. The heightened femininity of Palin’s political persona also came in for examination; during the Couric-Palin sketch, Couric pointed out to a stumped Palin, “It seems to me that when cornered you become increasingly adorable.” That little one-liner, accompanied by Fey’s inspired shooting of fake finger guns, distilled a gender dynamic–wherein women infantilize themselves as a defensive strategy–it might otherwise take thousands of words to unspool.

[…]

But in comedy, as in real life, the arrival of Palin on the scene threw Clinton into a new focus. Next to Palin, Clinton’s good qualities–her brains, competence, work ethic, her belief in secular government and reproductive freedoms, her ability to complete sentences–became far more evident than they had been before there was another potential “first woman” to compare her to. Nothing conveyed these haze-clearing realignments of perspective as quickly and as firmly as Fey and Poehler did in five and a half minutes. The parodic depiction of the two women side by side exposed the complex dynamics of Palin’s parasitism, their unwilling symbiosis, and their stark differences.

You can read reviews of the book at Gender Focus and Feministing.

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Enemy of the State: Heroine Lisbeth Salander Fights Back in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.

I am usually not a fan of trilogies; the third film often pales in comparison to the crescendo of emotion and suspense built in a series. And while the occasional exception exists (Return of the King), most (Godfather 3, Alien 3, Terminator 3) are substandard when you compare them to their phenomenal predecessors. Would The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the third installment in one of the best-selling trilogies, suffer the same fate? Perhaps. But how could I resist the lure of Lisbeth Salander, arguably one of the most interesting, unique and feminist heroines that has ever graced the page or screen?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the final film in the Millennium Trilogy, which also includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. GWKTHN picks up right where the second film leaves off. Punk hacker and researcher Lisbeth Salander is in critical condition after surviving a gunshot wound to the head, shoulder and hip. In the same hospital two doors down, her mortal enemy, the sinister Zalachenko, also recovers from life-threatening wounds. While Salander fights for her life physically, she must also prepare for an emotional battle of wits as she must stand trial for crimes committed as well as prove her mental competency. Salander’s friend, journalist and magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist, continues his unwavering support. He races to prove her innocence, uncovering a treacherous government conspiracy to silence Salander.
I’ve been engrossed by the movies and books written by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. So I couldn’t wait to see how the story ends.  My mother used to always say that a sequel was only good if you could watch it without seeing the other movie(s) in the series. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest would be difficult to watch without seeing the first two or reading the books. This is truly a film belonging to fans of the trilogy. With a different director, Daniel Alfredson, at the helm, it doesn’t stand alone as well as the first or even the second film. The movie suffers from a choppy pace. But the action scenes, such as the shootout in Samir’s restaurant and a police raid, are choreographed effectively. It’s the powerful performances by Noomi Rapace as the tattooed sullen survivor and Michael Nyqvist as the obstinate and passionate Mikael Blomkvist that elevate the material.

Michael Nyqvist stars as Mikael Blomkvist

Not surprisingly, there are differences between the book and its movie adaptation. Annika Gianinni, Salander’s lawyer, is made to seem less competent. In the book, she kicks ass during the trial in her flawless cross-examination of Salander’s childhood psychiatrist, slimy Peter Teleborian, who claims she needs to be institutionalized. But in the movie, she portrays far less resolve. Also, it’s never mentioned that Gianinni specializes in domestic violence and sexual assault cases, which spurred Blomkvist, her brother, to ask her to represent Salander. To my delight, the film retains the strong female police officers Monica Figueroa and Sonja Modig. Thankfully, the film cuts some extraneous storylines like Blomkvist and Figueroa as lovers. The subplot involving Erika Berger, Blomkvist’s best friend and editor of their magazine Millennium, concerns her taking a job at another publication and receiving sexually explicit emails from a possible stalker. In the film, Berger never leaves Millennium and doesn’t support Blomkvist’s stubborn investigation when it jeopardizes the safety of the other journalists. She still receives threatening emails but the film removes the whole premise of sexual harassment in the workplace, slightly diminishing Larsson’s theme of misogyny, preferring to focus on the government corruption.

In the U.S., the first book entitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, altered from its original Swedish title Men Who Hate Women. The Swedish name conveys the theme of misogyny Larsson carries throughout the entire trilogy. The first book contends with sexual assault, rape and domestic violence. The second book confronts sexual trafficking. The third book shows sexual harassment in the workplace. The trilogy depicts all of the different manifestations of men’s hatred towards women. To me, that was one of the things I enjoyed most about Larsson’s books: his ability to seamlessly fuse social justice with compelling characters and an interesting plot. Removing it somehow neuters the book’s message. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet‘s Nest’s original title is The Air Castle that Blew Up, with “air castle” referring to a “pipe dream.” It’s interesting to note Larsson’s original titles because only in the second one does he reference “girl” and in that particular book, he’s referencing Salander as a child. In the U.S., while they infantilize her in the titles, sadly reducing her to a “girl” rather than a “woman,” publishers shrewdly put Lisbeth Salander front and center, for she is the primary reason to read the books and watch the films.

Salander endured rape, assault and institutionalization; her rights throughout the trilogy have been violated. Yet she refuses to be a victim. Salander steels herself, always ready to fight back. For her trial, she dons a “costume” of garish goth make-up, mohawk hair and ripped clothes in court. She wasn’t going to pretend to be something she wasn’t; she had nothing to hide. This speaks to Salander’s strategy, a point not fully conveyed in the film. While Blomkvist, lawyer Gianinni, and her friends Plague, Holger Palmgren, and Dragan Armansky come to Salander’s aid and rally around her, she is an equal participant in her defense. Asphyxia is the program she designs to infiltrate people’s computers, which hacker Plague uses to uncover information on a trial witness. But if you hadn’t seen the other films or read the book, you’d never know that Salander’s brilliant mind invented the program. The last scene of the movie ends differently from the book too, detracting from Lisbeth’s emotional growth in learning to allow people into her life.

Annika Gianini (played by Annika Hallin) with Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace)

Actor Noomi Rapace brings the kick-ass heroine to life, imbuing her with strength and complexity. Despite a bedridden Salander for half the film, a complaint some reviewers have expressed, Rapace captivates. Beyond her dedication to the role (she trained for 7 months in preparation), she has a knack for conveying a range of emotions with a tilt of her chin or a narrowing of her eyes. Yet she’s underutilized here. I kept craving more Lisbeth, more Rapace…for me the two have become inextricably intertwined. I can’t imagine anyone else in the role, particularly as Hollywood gears up for Lisbeth Salander mania as actor Rooney Mara will attempt to fill Rapace’s shoes in the U.S. version.
My fave blogger Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood had the opportunity to chat with the indomitable Rapace (so jealous!). When Silverstein asked Rapace why she thinks women relate to Lisbeth Salander, Rapace replied
She does not complain and she doesn’t accept being a victim. Almost everybody has treated her so badly and has done horrible things to her but she doesn’t accept it and won’t become the victim they have tried to force her to be. She wants to live and will never give up. I find that so liberating. Her battle is for a better life and to be free and I think everybody experiences that at some point in their life. They say OK, I’m not going to take this anymore. This is the point of no return. I’m going to stand up and say no.  I’m going to be true to myself and even if you don’t like me that’s fine. I don’t want to play the game of the charming nice sexy girl anymore, I’m me. I think everybody can relate to that.

It was interesting watching this film and juxtaposing it with For Colored Girls which I saw the same weekend. Both convey the pain men can inflict on women; both show women struggling to not just survive but thrive. What continues to fascinate me about Lisbeth Salander is her defiance to yield, living life on her own terms. She doesn’t wait for justice to come from the authorities; she’s a warrior wielding her own vindication. Salander continually challenges categorization, refusing to be defined by her looks, her sexuality or her gender. She defines herself; a powerful message that we as women and as a society don’t hear often enough. I’m going to miss Lisbeth Salander.



Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She has previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Girl Who Played with Fire to Bitch Flicks.

Our 3-Year Blogiversary!

Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda plot their revenge in 9 to 5
Three years of Bitch Flicks! How can it be? Have we done any good? Is the state of women in film any better than it was when we started, on March 28, 2008? Or are we just shouting into the abyss?
Our egos aren’t so big as to think this little ol’ blog would chip away at a machine as big and finely-tuned as Hollywood. However, we see ourselves as part of a growing reaction against conservative, patriarchal values in mainstream film and the lack of women–and especially of diverse women–starring in, directing, writing, producing, and critiquing movies, television, and media in general (check out our “Sites We Like” blogroll for a number of people doing excellent work). We’re (still) sick to death of misogynistic, exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, ageist, one-dimensional, etc. portrayals of women in film. We’re (still) sick to death of the reign of the adolescent-male demographic as the coveted Ones. We’re (still) sick to death of being the exception, the Other, the minority, the ignored, the simplistic chicks. 
In other words, we still need Bitch Flicks.
Running a blog is, as those of you who do it yourselves know, difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. But it’s also very rewarding: you meet people online who share your interests and concerns, you explore ideas that other people help you more fully understand, and you have a venue for fighting back against systems that seem untouchable in everyday life. We’re grateful for all of you who read our pieces, comment on them, link to them and cross post them on your own sites. We’re especially grateful for those of you who have contributed pieces to our site, and expanded the discussion.
Here’s the part where we ask for your help.
We’ve tried to keep Bitch Flicks free from obnoxious, and often offensive, ads (yes, there’s that one Google ad in the sidebar, kept as a mere experiment, as we’ve earned nothing from it)–which means there has been zero revenue to pay for site hosting, guest writers, and upgrades. So we’ve added two ways you can help us pay for these things:
  1. Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating to the cause. Any amount, however small, is a gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.
  2. Purchase items through our Amazon store. We sometimes link to products on Amazon in our posts, and have a widget in our sidebar called “Bitch Flicks’ Picks.” If you go on to make purchases through our site, we earn a small percentage of the proceeds, and if it’s an awesome feminist film, TV show, or book–then we all win.

If you support what we do but can’t afford the financial contributions, there are a number of things you can do to show your appreciation and help spread the word about Bitch Flicks.

Finally, a big public thanks to the volunteer who created our new banner. We wanted to re-vamp the look of the site for our blogiversary, and that new banner is the biggest visual change. You might also notice the new pages (not all of which are complete yet!), new sidebar widgets, and new pictures on Twitter & Facebook. There are other new ideas we’ll be implementing in the coming months, so stay tuned, and, as always, thanks for reading!
–Amber & Stephanie

    In Memoriam: Elizabeth Taylor

    Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

     

    As you all likely know by now, Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday from congestive heart failure. There’s not much I can think to say about her that others haven’t said–and likely said better. Here are some highlights of her career as an actress, successful businesswoman, and HIV/AIDS activist.
    • Other awards Taylor won include a BAFTA, a GLAAD Media Vanguard Award, three Golden Globes–including the Cecil B. DeMille Award (one of only twelve women to win since the award’s inception in 1952), a SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, and many others–even a Razzie, for her role in 1994’s The Flintstones.
    • Her first film role was in the film There’s One Born Every Minute, when she was only ten years old, which led to her status as a child star. Adulthood brought her hit after hit, including Cleopatra in 1963, which was the most expensive movie to date with a budget of a million dollars. Her final feature film role was, unfortunately, in The Flintstones, though she appeared on television twice in 2001 and once on stage in 2007.
    I must confess that the only film I’ve ever seen starring Elizabeth Taylor is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (not even Cleopatra, for shame!), which was amazing. In the past few decades, she’s been more active in business ventures and activism (and, of course, she remains known not only as a classic Hollywood actress, but also for her eight marriages, celebrity friendships, and pricey jewelry collection).
    • Not only did Taylor collect jewelry, but she also designed a successful collection. Her perfume line, which includes Passion, White Diamonds, and Black Pearls, earns roughly 200 million dollars a year. Many celebrities followed in her footsteps, creating signature fragrances as part of their branding initiatives.
    • Perhaps her most lasting legacy, other than her acting, is her HIV/AIDS activism. She raised over 100 million dollars to fight the disease, helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and founded The Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation.  

    This isn’t, by any means, an exhaustive list of her accomplishments and influence. Check out her obit at the New York Times and the interactive media imbedded within, including a clip from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and leave your links to Elizabeth Taylor related pieces in the comments.

    Documentary Review: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

    Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)

    Most reviews of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work begin by describing how the film opens–with a close-up shot of Rivers’ face, without make-up. This is, of course, a metaphor for the goal of the film (to get behind the facade) and an acknowledgment of  what Rivers has come to be most famous for–her surgically-altered appearance. While her face is surely a piece of surgical work, the far more fascinating work is that of her long life in the spotlight, and her drive to keep going, keep performing, keep selling, when the culture tells her she should stop (or that she should have stopped long ago).
    I went into this film feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, it’s a documentary about an extraordinary woman, made by two women–Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg, who are known for their previous films The End of America, The Devil Came on Horseback, and the forthcoming Burma Soldier, among others. It’s about a mouthy broad (and I love mouthy broads, women who speak their minds and aren’t afraid to put themselves out there), who is funny, and who has been at it since 1966. On the other hand, it’s yet another film about a wealthy white woman (I just watched and reviewed The September Issue, about Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour) who lives like “Marie Antoinette, if she’d have had money.” Though I enjoy most of her comedy, I–like many others–had come to see her primarily through her surgically-altered appearance, her anything-for-a-buck business approach (A comedy icon selling jewelry on QVC? Starring on Celebrity Apprentice?), and her less-than-feminist years hosting the red carpet.

    Watching the film, however, gave me a new appreciation for Rivers–even while not sharing a number of her perspectives. A Piece of Work documents a year in Rivers’ life: she turns 75, faces down a heckler at a stand-up show in Wisconsin, honors George Carlin in a tribute, gets roasted by Comedy Central, and injects new life into her career by winning Celebrity Apprentice. All while still selling that damn jewelry. Her energy level is astounding, and I wonder how she manages to do all she does at the age of 75.

    Rivers is an odd character. Being a superstar female comic alone is odd in the U.S.–only a few came before her–but we get a very real look at her life, at the troubles she has faced  (her husband’s suicide) and continues to face, and at the loneliness that certainly helps her drive to fill her daily calendar. She is vulnerable and still nervous when going on stage, especially when pursuing what she calls the one sacred part of her life–her acting–in which she hasn’t seen a lot of personal success. I came to find her more compelling and interesting than my initial perception of her, and encourage anyone to see this film and learn more about a woman who refuses to stop.

    Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

    Creator of The Wire issues heartfelt critique of the “war on drugs” from Feministing

    Last week, actress Felicia Pearson, who plays “Snoop” on The Wire, was arrested as part of a major drug raid that included 30 people. While this is certainly disappointing news, because I think a lot of people are rooting for her success after her involvement with the show, I was particularly struck by the reaction of David Simon, creator and executive producer of The Wire and Pearson’s colleague.

    A History of (Firsts) for Women and Film from The Film Experience

    First woman to receive an honorary regular-sized Oscar: Greta Garbo in 1954. Yep, after 20 or so men had been given one. After another 15 or so men were given non-competitive statues the next woman was Onna White for choreographing Oliver! (1968).

    The ratio continues this way: 1970s men: 14; women: 3; 1980s men: 8; women: 1; 1990s men: 9;women: 3; 2000s men 12: women: 1; This year men: 3; women: 0; What the hell is AMPAS’s problem with women, exactly?

    Interview with Sherry Hormann, Director of Desert Flower from Women and Hollywood

    Desert Flower opens this Friday in NY and LA.  It stars Liya Kebede as Waris Dirie, a woman who escaped from Somalia and became a top fashion model and UN spokeswoman against female genital mutilation.  Director Sherry Hormann answered some questions about the film.

    I Love Lucy: Radical Feminist Propaganda? from Against All Evidence 

    Ricky: All people in the world are divided into two groups… men and women.

    Lucy: [sarcastically] I know. It’s a wonderful arrangement.

    Ricky: Now. Men have short hair, and women have long hair. That’s the difference between them.

    Lucy: Oh?

    Icons of Black Female Empowerment from The Root

    From Diana Ross to Lena Horne to Queen Latifah, black women in pop culture have defied the odds, inspired and awed their fans. In honor of Women’s History Month, we’ve put together a list of some of the icons of black female empowerment.

    March Movies I Won’t Be Seeing (And One I Might) from The Funny Feminist

    First up is Sucker Punch, starring a bunch of life-sized Bratz dolls:

    Summary: A group of girls escape from an insane asylum where they have been imprisoned against their will, kicking ass and taking names on the way!  They also happen to be wearing next to nothing while they do this, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right?

    The Feministing Five: Anita Sarkeesian from Feministing

    Anita Sarkeesian is the founder of the fabulous blog and video series Feminist Frequency, where she analyzes depictions of gender in pop culture in an accessible, entertaining way. Sarkeesian believes that popular culture is a powerful force, one that can shape how we think about the world, and that it even though it can seem silly, it deserves serious analysis: she wrote her master’s thesis on representations on strong women in scifi and fantasy television.

    Why I Am a Male Feminist from The Root

    The word turns off a lot of men (insert snarky comment about man-hating feminazis here) — and women. But here’s why black men should be embracing the “f” word.

    Leave links to what you’ve read and written this week about women and film!

    Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Played with Fire

    Good Girl Gone Bad: Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander Burns Up the Screen in The Girl Who Played with Fire
    This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.
    I’ve been utterly consumed by Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s gripping Millennium Trilogy (I’ll be reading the third book soon…so excited!).  I loved the first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, entranced by the burning intensity of the controversial heroine, Lisbeth Salander.  So I eagerly watched the second film in the series, The Girl Who Played with Fire.
    Picking up one year after the first film ends, a young journalist and a doctoral student are researching the sex trafficking trade in Sweden.  Publisher and journalist Mikael Blomkvist’s magazine Millennium decides to publish the controversial work, essentially exposing the identities of the men who purchased young women for sex.  As they are about to go to print with the story, three violent murders are committed.  When the police suspect brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander’s involvement, Blomkvist is determined to clear her name.  But Salander plots her own vengeful agenda against her enemies, plunging the audience even deeper into the mysterious heroine’s troubled and painful past.
    I enjoyed the gritty, tense film.  With a different screenwriter and director at the helm, the movie surprisingly retains the same mood as the first film yet not the same depth.  Director Daniel Alfredson provides some visually stunning camera shots.  The ominous and eerie score perfectly sets the suspenseful tone.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t live up to the riveting novel.  So much of what I loved about the book is missing as an exorbitant amount of the plot and dialogue are cut from the movie.
    The beauty of Larsson’s books lies in his fusion of societal analysis with compelling characters and gripping suspenseful plots.  In The Girl Who Played with Fire, he focuses his commentary on human trafficking, mental health care, espionage, LGBT discrimination and domestic violence.  Regarding the central theme of trafficking in the book, the young journalist Dag Svensson goes into great detail about the johns and researcher Mia Bergman provides the point of views of the women trafficked as she relays their harrowing tales.  According to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their book Half the Sky, 3 million women and girls are forced into prostitution, as many traffickers coerce, beat and rape women into submission.  As with sexual assault in the first novel, Larsson gives you a sense of the horrors these women face.  But this and other vital themes are completely glossed over in the film.
    Part of what makes the book so captivating is that it’s a whodunit; you feel as if you’ve stepped into an episode of Law and Order: SVU (I kept waiting for Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni to leap out and bust the perps).  The police investigation into the murders comprises a huge component of the story.  The plot twists and turns and you don’t know the identity of the killer or killers.  Salander’s involvement is ambiguous, as the book doesn’t follow her whereabouts for roughly 100 pages following the murders.  But the film basically tells you right up front, forgoing most of the mystery.
    By its end, the movie (and book too) spirals into a violent frenzy, reminiscent of a slasher film with SPOILER ALERT!! characters wielding axes and chainsaws, along with numerous dead bodies buried outside a warehouse and someone buried alive.  Ending on a cliff hanger, it leaves us yearning to know the characters’ fate.
    Anything lacking in the film, is made up for by the outstanding performances of the two powerful leads.  While he gave a solid performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I kept yearning for more emotion from actor Michael Nyqvist as the impassioned journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  In The Girl Who Played with Fire, he delivers, bringing Blomkvist’s obstinate and obsessive compulsion to solve the murders to life.  Devoted to Salander, his former research partner and lover, Blomkvist races to piece together the puzzle of the murders.  Nyqvist captures the essence of Blomkvist’s stubborn optimism and charisma.
    But the spotlight still belongs to actor Noomi Rapace.  While she blew me (and numerous other critics) away with her performance in the first film, I am even more impressed with Rapace as the tattooed researcher Lisbeth Salander this time around.  She stepped into the role through physical training, 7 facial piercings and obtaining her motorcycle license.  Yet she also emotionally transformed herself.  In an interview, Rapace said that she would sit alone, away from the cast and crew, channeling Salander’s anger. Rapace effortlessly evokes Salander’s shrewd intellect, stubbornness and wrath.  We also get to see Salander’s tenderness in her scenes with her trusted former guardian Holmer Palmgren and her lover Miriam “Mimmi” Wu.  She doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, a challenge for an actor, yet Rapace lets us into the wounded character’s world through her subtle yet stellar portrayal.
    Lisbeth Salander has generated an enormous amount of press.  It’s unusual to see a female character exude such ferocity.  Usually when we see violence from women in films, they are subordinate to a male counterpart or lover, re-articulating gendered stereotypes. But not Lisbeth.  An unlikely feminist, she despises misogyny, yearning for fair and equal treatment of women.  Salander refuses to be a victim after her own sexual assault.  Despite her pained and troubled childhood, she never wallows in self-pity.  Salander follows her own moral code, wreaking vengeance on those who have abused her with little regard to the law.  She takes responsibility and accepts the consequences of her actions.  Some may argue that she’s not feminine enough, acting like a male disguised in a female form.  But I think that ignores what makes Salander so refreshing.  Self-reliant and clever, she’s a resilient survivor, never backing down from a fight.  A fascinating and fearless character, she is defined neither by her gender nor her fluid sexuality.
    While not living up to the book or the first film, it’s still worthwhile to watch for the phenomenal performances by Rapace and Nyqvist.  Each of them truly embodies their alter egos.  Rapace in particular mesmerizes with a smoldering strength.   I cannot wait to see (and read) what happens next in the third installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

    Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She has previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to Bitch Flicks.