Author: Elizabeth Kiy

The Curse of Beauty: The Meaning of ‘Penthouse North’

In her Central Park West apartment, Agneta Eckemyr lives in a wonderland of knick knacks, of lace and faded photos and rose appliqués. Her artfully shabby chic wrought iron bed, mammoth and cloud-like, is crowned with embroidered pillows; she lounges with one that says, “And they Lived Happily Ever After.” She picks up another, “The Queen Reigns Here” and sighs, it’s no longer true.
Once upon a time, she was beautiful. Impossibly so.

In a melancholy moment, Agneta remembers her youth
In a melancholy moment, Agneta remembers her youth

 

In her Central Park West apartment, Agneta Eckemyr lives in a wonderland of knick knacks, of lace and faded photos and rose appliqués. Her artfully shabby chic wrought iron bed, mammoth and cloud-like, is crowned with embroidered pillows; she lounges with one that says, “And They Lived Happily Ever After.” She picks up another, “The Queen Reigns Here” and sighs, it’s no longer true.

Once upon a time, she was beautiful. Impossibly so.

Back in the 70s, Swedish born Agneta, subject of Johanna St Michaels’s documentary Penthouse North, which makes its New York premiere this month at DOC NYC, was a model turned actress turned would-be screenwriter and prodigiously skilled fashion designer and interior decorator. She lived in one of Manhattan’s best apartments, a steal thanks to rent control, and held glamourous parties with rock stars and the New York glitterati. She was a social magnet, charming and vibrant with a revolving door policy in her home and a sense of humour about herself. She designed clothes for people like Julia Roberts and Grace Jones, covered Playboy and Cosmopolitan, was considered for a Bond-girl role and was generally pleased with her place in the world. For most of her life she had succeeded at using her beauty as currency, even the ads for her clothes show her beautiful face.

The question Penthouse North ruminates on, but offers little in the way of answers for, is what Agneta can be without that beautiful face, that beautiful body that once were her everything. The documentary began as an attempt to explore the impacts of beauty on the aging process, but Agneta’s real life tragedies intervened and made the story much more substantial.

As the film begins, Agneta is in her 60s. She can’t pay her seamstress and her dresses aren’t selling. Her landlord threatens eviction after discovering she has been subletting to multiple roommates to pay the rent and if evicted, she matter-of-factly states, she plans to kill herself. She has no income and the homeless shelter and the food bank, worlds away from her penthouse, look like they will be part of her near future. Much worse is the fact that she has been forgetting things and repeating herself. In the film, she is told she has high blood pressure and advised not to eat sugar, though she ignores this. Text at its end informs us that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s since the film was shot.

As she faces a legal battle, a friend tells her: “You have to be real now, you can’t live in fantasy.” But Agneta continually refuses.

She will give up in a fight and leave the room before facing anything harsh. She will tell people she can’t deal with hardships right, that she’s not in the mood and break down in tears. She is sure someone or something will come along to save her. Even as she signs up for welfare, she is talking about the films she was in, her relationships with Ringo Starr and the like. In the words of someone’s over-anxious mother, she continues to make a spectacle of herself.

 

Agneta’s apartment is prime real estate and even at a reduced rate, she has a hard time affording it
Agneta’s apartment is prime real estate and even at a reduced rate, she has a hard time affording it

 

Penthouse North becomes increasingly uncomfortable to watch as she falls apart. Often it feels as if we are eavesdropping on the hardest points in Agneta’s life. The question of exploitation is raised when it becomes clear that Agneta is not in her right mind. I am left wondering if she could properly consent to having such personal aspects of her life filmed.

Just as the filmmakers were, we as viewers are lulled into a sense of security. From the film’s opening with all its lovingly framed shots of the Penthouse North apartment, a place that looks ripped from a magazine, we’re sure this will be only a light-hearted character piece. A study of a deluded woman living in luxury, that we don’t have to think much about, except every once in a while to “ooh” and “ahh” over her pretty things. But it’s impossible to pretend Agneta is not a real person; her story is stranger than fiction. As one of her friends, frustrated over the way she fascinates people, makes clear, people have a tendency to romanticize her life, to see her as a tragic figure. Instead, she’s a sick woman who needs help instead of enamored style bloggers.

Still, even in the aborted screenplay she wrote about her glamourous life back when she was living it, it’s clear that this life was far from stable. Agneta had always struggled to pay rent even at a fraction of its true worth. Back then, she was unable to sell the screenplay because all the directors and producers she encountered only wanted to have sex with her.

Agneta says she has felt exploited her whole life, that everyone has taken more from her than they provided. Men used her for sex, and did things like invite her to dinners where they masturbated under the table and it didn’t occur to her to say anything, to do anything but act the naïve, polite schoolgirl who thanks them for the invitation. After all this time she feels she wasted her energy in relationships making beautiful tableaus of the best food and flowers and giving great sex but always being left anyway. Even now, people are constantly taking advantage of her, like the squatter who refuses to leave and screams at her all day.

Like Madame Butterfly waiting for a man everyone knows plans never to return to her, Agneta refuses to believe that things will not just magically get better. She wishes she’d gone back to Sweden, that she’d accepted the proposals of rich gentlemen and left her apartment. In the end, she seems imprisoned in this home she is on the verge of losing, it is the only place where she can feel safe and in control. Yet, it is a curse that has kept her from living a real life among the mortals.

 

In her youth, Agneta felt constrained by “bubbly bimbo” roles
In her youth, Agneta felt constrained by “bubbly bimbo” roles

 

Agneta talks a lot about the character of “the bimbo,” who she has played for most of her life and all of her career. She says she learned being a bimbo was currency in America and does her impression of one, puffing out her chest and speaking in an exaggerated Swedish milkmaid accent. Here is the conflict in her life, she has become the bimbo to survive, dressed up in her clothes and seen her in the mirror and eventually believed that was all there was of worth to her. And it was fun, it was lucrative and exciting, but it stops working. You have to be young.

Because all she was given were “bubbly bimbo” parts in films, her decision to write a screenplay was an attempt to take control, to write parts for herself with a range of emotions and write her own stories, to no longer be a one-dimensional character in others’. In clips from her old films and magazine covers, she is mostly naked and supplicant, always smiling and asking for me.

But this was never enough. Agneta wanted to bare her soul as well as her body. In this era where women are criticized for looking ugly when they cry, her desire to be allowed to be sad,  to contort her face in a way besides eager-to-please smiles, is very relatable.

 

Agneta shows of her fashion designs, she hopes they will save her from ruin
Agneta shows off her fashion designs; she hopes they will save her from ruin

 

At some points, you just want to shake her out of it, tell her she’s incredibly talented in other ways. That she could always be a decorator if all else fails. It’s tragic that Agneta can’t see this. Her beautiful apartment becomes her self, by making it beautiful and admired, she can be too. Even the beautiful clothes she creates, the kind of floaty white dresses a generation of girls in love with The Virgin Suicides would kill themselves for, are attempts to feel beautiful herself.

At one point, the filmmakers arrange for Agneta to encounter her young self by hiring young actresses to act out her script. It is surreal to see her dress the girls playing her and size them up. In one scene, she looks on, jealous of the girl playing her young self, who is being praised for her beautiful eyes. She is framed in the same shot as the girl, looking over her shoulder, like a specter, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

She conflates herself and the fictionalized version of herself from her script, saying “I” and then correcting herself. When talking about the script, she describes her character as strong, but emotionally fragile.

In one scene, her friend tells her she does not need to try to sexy anymore, to pout and show off her cleavage. She can go for dignified beauty instead. In his view, the aging woman trying to be young is a grotesque.

But this cuts her off from actualization, suggests she should stop trying to be attractive because she has gotten older. This view says, if you’re not attractive anymore no one wants to see you or your body. You dressing the way you want to now offends us. Beautiful women are allowed to age if they become classic, boast taunt leather skin and an air of health, and dress in heathered sweaters and tweed slacks, buoyed by accumulated wealth and patrician voices. Not if they continue to try to dress, to live, like they’re still the fairy princesses that they’ve always been.

 

Agneta applies make-up in an attempt to look young
Agneta applies make-up in an attempt to look young

 

It raises the question of whether there is an age appropriate way of dress and why. Are there clothes an older woman isn’t allowed to wear, or decor she’s not allowed to love? Why is it that our culture is so quick to look at a woman like Agneta as a pathetic, inhuman creature? But as for Agneta herself, its unclear, whether she dressing this way because she thinks looking sexy is the only way to be worthwhile or because its how she wants to dress, what she wants to show of her body?

Early on, Agneta gets a massage and her soft, older woman’s body is on display. The film is riveted by her flesh, the spots and wrinkles, the uncontrolled movements of her neck, and her uneven cleavage. There are frequent extreme close-ups of her body, her face, her breasts, so tightly framed that we can see the pores, the hair and lines, the permanent purse of her mouth that mark her as an aging woman.

Is this view of her exploitative? Are we meant to feel sorry for her just from the sight of her flabby skin? Agneta certainly feels this way, obsessed as she is with reclaiming her youth. While being filmed, she is constantly asking if this make-up or that hairstyle will make her look younger, asking to sit in more flattering light (shades of Blanche DuBois in that) and taking breaks to freshen up her lipstick.

It’s important to note that this film was made by a female director and as such, is directed from a female gaze. We are meant to identify with Agneta, to think “there but for the grace of God go I,” not to shudder in repulsion at the idea that we once found her attractive. Shots pan from Agneta’s breasts to her face, but spend a lot of time focused on her eyes and the pain clearly visible within them. The camera’s eye is kind. These scenes are shot from a directorial distance, as documentary evidence, capturing but never commenting.

It is so odd to see her in the real world, waiting for the subway, struggling alone with heavy bags of groceries and facing eviction and indignity, an ordinary person’s problems, the ones we are a culture tend to think beautiful people are exempted from.

Agneta is living every woman’s worst nightmare: old, poor, alone and unsure of her looks, even losing her mind. I think maybe her story tells us about the curse that beauty can be. We’re told that beautiful people don’t have to live in the real world, that if you were born lovely to look at you can live in fairyland. Except, the truth no speaks, is that when you return to earth as everyone eventually does, you will find that 40 years have passed in one day of fairyland’s and everyone who loved you or cared about you will be lost.

This idea makes me feel guilty. I am exactly the audience for film. I read books like this (most recently the delightful Wish Her Safe At Home), I watch movies like this. I am fascinated by characters like Blanche, like Miss Havisham and real fallen beauties like Little Edie and Dare Wright. I decided to watch this film in the first place because I was drawn to the idea of a beautiful tragedy. Even the constant fairy tale references I am tempted to make here, seem like I’m trying to make things more picturesque than they are, that I’m attracted to the wrong parts of the story.

I don’t think I am at all unusual in that.

 

Agenta’s beautiful home is left behind
Agenta’s beautiful home is left behind

 

Penthouse North is hard to watch but maybe it should be. It’s an important film that touches a nerve, forces us to think about our ideas of aging, of how we treat the elderly, of how we tell stories and force people’s lives into romantic frameworks, three-act fairy tale structures.

There’s no happy ending for Agneta. She loses her apartment and moves back to Sweden to live in a retirement home and lose herself to Alzheimer’s. It’s important to remember these are the facts.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Talking with Horror’s Twisted Twins: An Interview with the Soska Sisters

To get an idea of the Soska sisters, picture ‘The Shining’s Grady twins, only all grown up and in control of their destinies. Just in time for Halloween, Jen and Sylvia Soska spoke with us about their favorite horror movies, the hardships of working as female directors in masculine genre, their work on ‘See No Evil 2’ and what’s next for their careers.

 

To get  an idea of the Soska sisters, picture The Shining’s Grady twins, only all grown up and in control of their destinies.

As kids, Jen and Sylvia Soska were drawn to horror movies, fascinated by the spectacle of the genre and the mystique of the Final Girl. When they grew up, they tried acting, only to find the roles they were offered as a set identical twin actresses, were either infantilizing or fetishistic.

Fed up, they wrote, directed and starred in Dead Hooker in a Trunk , a low-budget strike-out at the constraints they faced in film school. Next came cult favorite, American Mary, a dark journey through the world of body modification and the controversial rape-revenge genre. One of my personal favourite horror movies, American Mary features a fascinating central character in Mary Mason (Katherine Isabelle), who morphs from anxious med-student to a cold as ice antihero we can’t help but root for, even as she becomes a monster.

Their new film See No Evil 2, a sequel to the 2006 WWE Studios production, See No Evil, is an entertaining and well-thought out slasher flick that knows the genre conventions well enough to simultaneously play around with them and celebrate their fun. All the familiar elements from the sisters’ previous films are there: three dimensional female characters, gore and gleeful violence, splashes of humour, and a Hitchcock-style cameo, now paired with the terrifying figure of wrestler Glenn “Kane” Jacobs, a longtime favorite of the sisters, as the hulking serial killer, Jacob Goodnight.

Just in time for Halloween, the Soska sisters spoke with us about their favorite horror movies, the hardships of working as female directors in masculine genre, their work on See No Evil 2 and what’s next for their careers.

Bitch Flicks: What horror films do you remember scaring or affecting you as children?

Sylvia: Poltergeist– it was our first horror film that was the catalyst to our mum explaining how filmmaking really works and us falling deeply in love with the genre. I remember The Stand was the next thing to really scare the shit out of me. I saw Hellraiser at a very young age, but I was so into prosthetics that it was just beautiful to me.

Jen: Alien, too. I remember being so scared at the end and my mum telling me not to worry because Ripley always wins. I was witnessing the evolution of the final girl without even knowing it.

BF: How did you realize you could create your own films?

S: By being pushed to the point where we made a punk rock FU in the form of a short film faux trailer called Dead Hooker in a Trunk. We are life long failed actresses that wanted to use our martial arts experience to get into stunt work that ended up in a crappy film school which was for us the last straw. They took away our budget for our final project, so we decided to write, direct, produce, star in, and do the stunt work for our own project. We were annoyed so we made sure to make it as batshit insane and offensive as possible. And come graduation night, it played to half the audience walking out and the other half cheering so loud you could barely hear the crass dialogue. That was what started it.

J: Robert Rodriguez and his book Rebel Without a Crew was a huge influence, too. Rodriguez has his epic Ten Minute Film School segments where he shows filmmakers how to do what he does in his films. I used to think I wanted to be an actor before I realized how much more fulfilling directing and writing is. You get to create this whole world, and stories, and characters. As an actor you’re usually chasing work you don’t even want just to be working.

 

BF: Can you tell me about the change from being actresses to filmmakers in charge of your own productions? Was the change empowering?

S: It was so empowering. Neither of us are fans of labeling, but being twins – people just put you in this box. As kids, it was cutesy, talk at the same time stuff, as we grew older it became overtly sexual, talk at the same time stuff. As we got into our twenties, we knew we wanted to do something different. I love watching films and always fantasized about what I would do if I could make films, I never thought it could be a reality. To have the job of creating the characters that we do and making the films that we do is an amazing opportunity.

J: It felt like coming home. In a weird way all the skills we had that we didn’t think had anything to do with one another just came together. I love filmmaking. We’re natural story tellers so being able to turn our ideas, concepts, and characters to the big screen is the most unbelievable feeling.

BF: Why are you drawn to horror? What came first, an interest in filmmaking or in horror? Did you seek out horror or fall into the genre due to its accessibility to low budget production?

S:I never even realized the effect horror films had on me until I went into filmmaking. I see all of my interests like horror films, comic books, video games, and wrestling reflected in what I do now because I grew up on that stuff and it moulded me into the strange individual I am today. The reason why DHIAT was low budget was because we didn’t know how hard or expensive making a movie would be. We read Rebel Without a Crew, we saw Grindhouse in the theaters a million times and thought, yup, we gotta make a feature film called Dead Hooker in a Trunk. We have to do that.

J: I’ve loved horror movies as far back as I can remember. It’s definitely not because it can be done inexpensively at even a low level. Surely documentaries and dramas are even easier to do on a small budget. Horror is just so much fun. You go to horror film festivals or conventions and you find the happiest, most out going people in the world. People who are into horror just seem to be happier, nicer people. Maybe it’s because we get out all our aggression on the screen, ha ha

BF: Have you ever wanted to experiment with a different genre?

S: Absolutely. It started with us wanting to tackle every sub genre within horror – so far we have body horror and slasher, maybe grindhouse if you really want to stretch the genre, and I don’t know what our ABCs of Death 2 segment, T is for Torture Porn, would be categorized as. We are just in post production on our first action film, part of the WWE Studios and Lionsgate Film Action Six Pack Series, called Vendetta, starring Dean Cain, Paul “Big Show” Wight, and Michael Eklund. It’s the macho-est thing we have ever done – it’s very gritty and super violent.

J: We definitely want to tackle each and every sub genre in horror. I wouldn’t say there’s really any genre we wouldn’t want to take on. It all depends on the project. We’d even make a kids movie if they’d ever let us, ha ha. I’d really love to make a Western. We’ll be doing our first comic book adaptation when we bring Jimmy Palmiotti’s Painkiller Jane to the big screen.

BF: Can you tell me a bit about some of your influences?

S: I adore Lars Von Trier’s work, it’s so unforgivingly bleak yet beautiful what he does. Takeshi Miike is just a master of tone and gore. Mary Harron is my hero, seeing her speak was the reason why I wanted to be a director – she’s so eloquent and her films deliver such a punch. We learned how films got made from Robert Rodriguez – we adore his work!

J: I love Joss Whedon. His writing, humor, characters, and story arcs are just incredible. I’ve loved him since he worked on Roseanne, but it was Buffy that really made me fall for him and his stereotype breaking, unconventional characters. And his out of nowhere, heart breaking favorite character deaths.

BF: Do you ever experience any prejudice or roadblocks as women in horror? Has that effected your sensibility? Difficulty getting funding?

S: Always and I think it might be forever. No matter how many cool people are out there, there will be hateful people that are bigoted, cruel, and disrespectful. We paid for our first film, my parents – who are the most wonderful and supportive people on the planet – re-mortgaged their home to invest in American Mary so it could happen, and then there came Lionsgate and WWE Studios who loved our stuff and wanted to team up to make some cool films. Getting funding is difficult, there are some misogynistic pricks out there but there are also a lot of cool people who don’t suck at life; with our time working with these studios – we got cool people who were funding the projects.

J: Oh, sure. But sexism is an issue much bigger than the film industry. I’ve encountered it everywhere I’ve worked and usually paired with ageism. We’ve never encountered it from someone who is actually successful and happy with their lives. It’s more often miserable people, often ones who somehow failed forward and are wanna be filmmakers themselves who end up just resenting us.

The Soska sisters play a set of twins in American Mary

BF: Do you feel your films have a female sensibility? What other horror films do you feel might have a female sensibility? What would your dream film be?

S: Definitely, but it’s because Jen and I don’t believe in disposable characters. Everyone who exists in one of our films is important and unique. I think it comes from our acting days when we’d find ourselves going for roles that were lame just because we wanted to be working. Some awesome horror films with female sensibility would be Stoker, Excision , Spring , Martyrs, Inside, and Audition. You really get to see real, flawed female characters taking centre stage in these very amazing films. Being Hungarian, the dream project that we really want is Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess.

J: You can kill a hundred people in a film and have it not connect at all with the audience or you can kill a single person in a very real and emotional way. I think women have more of an eye for suffering. I totally agree with Sylv. It would be such a thrill to bring the Hungarian Murderess, Elizabeth Bathory.

BF: Do you feel you have a certain responsibility as female directors working in horror? Why is it important to have a female voice in horror?

S: Yes, because there are so few of us working. Not because there is a lack of female directors, but a serious lack of female directors being hired. Thank God you have directors like Jovanka Vuckovic making Clive Barker’s Jacqueline Ess and Kathryn Bigelow kicking ass all kinds of ass, and this is the same filmmaker that made the amazingly bro-tastic Point Break. That said, I want to see more. When you don’t have the perspective of half your population weighing in artistically there is a problem. There are too many stories not being told.

J: I wish I had more female role models growing up. The directors I loved that had the biggest influence on me were all male directors. John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Clive Barker, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch… It’s really important for us to do well so that other little girls can be inspired to be filmmakers, too. We need to hear more female voices.

BF: You’ve set out to cast women in lead roles in your films. Dead Hooker in the Truck was originally intended for an all women cast. There are several prominent female characters in See No Evil 2. Why is this important to you? Why do you cast yourselves in your films?

S: I have watched too many two-dimensional throwaway female characters. I have read for too many of them. I think it’s time to see the modern woman reflected properly in our entertainment. I want to see as versatile and complicated characters as are traditionally given to leading men. We play a lot with gender stereotypes in our films. I think gender is a big issue right now, things are slowly starting to change, and I want to be a part of that. As for our own cameos in our films, it’s something we loved that Hitchcock used to do. That and kill blondes.

J: I spent too much of my acting days chasing after roles I didn’t really even want. The options out there for women, let alone identical twins, was incredibly limiting. I like to write the kind of roles I would have killed to play or even audition for. We don’t believe in throwaway characters. Everyone that’s there needs a purpose and to look hot isn’t enough of one. I love Joss Whedon’s answer to “why do you write strong women?” “Because you’re still asking me that.” Women are every bit as strong and complex and interesting as men, but that’s just not often reflected enough in the films we see coming out. Women have such a capacity for evil. Just check out David Fincher’s Gone Girl. It’s such a beautifully executed film.

BF: What is your process working together? Do you each tackle different things? How has working with a partner changed your approach or refined it?

S: Jen and I are born collaborators. We went to school together, we’ve always been roommates, we’ve shared the same jobs, we have collaboration down to a fine art in a creepy The Shining hive mind kind of way. We have similar interests, but we are very different people. We take different paths to get to the same place. It is definitely more refined now, we just know what needs to be done and just divide and conquer. Jen’s awesome to work with on set, I’m really lucky.

J: I’ve never not had a partner. I’m a twin. I’m very lucky to have been born with such a talented artist, best friend, and strong business partner. Sylv is awesome. She’s so darkly creative. We have the same sensibilities and humor, but we’re very different. We always arrive at the same goal, but the ways we get there are very different. We really do compliment each other.

BF: How has being twins shaped your careers? Twins are quite a horror trope in itself, has that influenced you in your lives and attraction to horror?

S: My whole life I’ve walked into rooms and hear people talk about us being twins. It’s cool, but I wanted to be something more than that and it’s proven to be a difficult task. We felt confidant that being filmmakers could be recognizable than being twins. I remember the first time I heard someone call us the Twisted Twins and I fucking loved it. We are definitely seen as a sideshow oddity, which doesn’t bother me. I’m a freak, I like freaks. I love being a twin. It seems sad to me to not have a twin.

J: I’ve gratefully never had to know what it’s like to not have a twin. It’s really the greatest thing ever. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t have a twin. Because we’re twins we have always stood out in a crowd and grew up with people staring at us. Being an identical twin is also like having a backstage pass to the greatest shit. You will definitely see duality in our films. We love symmetry, you can see it in our cinematography. We like to show two sides to each of our characters. We’ll repeat little things, lines, or actions. Often in foreshadowing.

BF: How do you feel about your reputation as cult favorites?

S: I feel like we showed up under-dressed and over-loud with these crazy films and some people totally got it and decided to support us; and other people just loathe our existence. I like that the people that do like our films really fucking like them, that’s more than you could ever ask for!

J: It’s an insane honor! I can’t believe it, it’s just so surreal. I’m so grateful. It’s so weird to me that all the stuff we were made fun of for liking and being into growing up are the things people really seem to like about us now. I think all us nerds just grew up and took over, ha ha.

 

The cast of See No Evil 2 includes horror favourites like Danielle Harris

BF: As horror films, your films feature a lot of violence against women, how do you feel about this? Is it empowering to shape these narratives yourselves with a female voice? For example, American Mary works as a rape revenge story and Dead Hooker in The Trunk features a prolonged flashback to the beating of a prostitute.

S: The prolonged death of the Hooker in DHIAT was made with the intention of being very difficult to watch. We didn’t create the term ‘Dead Hooker in a Trunk’, there is a society wide stigma on these women that devalue them as worthless human beings. When working girls go missing, people don’t really care. We wanted people to care about the Hooker, we wanted to show that yeah, there’s a lot of silly stuff in the film to laugh at, but when it comes to the physical destruction of this woman, it’s not a joke. We are at a point in time where we need to get a zero tolerance for horrendously vile acts against women. We put these moments in these films because we want to open up a dialogue about it and it’s a lot easier to do with a genre film than other platforms.

J: Mary had her morals compromised and her ideals of being one of the guys, one of the surgeons she so admired, destroyed steadily before the rape. That was just the last thing she believed in taken away from her. Her idol fallen in a big way. The reason we put violence against women in our films is because it is so common in real life. It’s so common that people just turn a blind eye to it. The amount of letters and emails we’ve received from women who’d been sexually assaulted and had their attacker go unpunished was disgusting. They were so happy to see Mary get her revenge because there is so little justice in the world.

BF: Can you tell me a bit about See No Evil 2 and how you got involved in it and working with WWE?

S: After American Mary, we took meeting after meeting to get to work on our next film, an original monster movie called BOB, but all they wanted to see was a watered down version of American Mary. It was getting depressing. People think after you have a critically acclaimed film everything just falls into place, it doesn’t. When we got the offer for See No Evil 2, we were super excited. We are huge WWE fangirls, we started watching when the Kane character was introduced, and it was a cool slasher – it was a dream project. Lionsgate and WWE have been incredibly supportive collaborative partners.

J: We really love horror and want to take on every sub genre in horror. Not too many directors get the opportunity to.

BF: What was it like approaching a story for a sequel rather than an original story and working with someone else’s script? How did you put your personal spin on the project?

S: It was really fun, but that’s in large part because of the writers, Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby, because they have very similar sensibilities to us. They are very rad Brits and that like to horribly murder people in their scripts. As soon as we got involved, we all got into the story, what we had, what we could do to push it more, it was a very collaborative process. Then you get Danielle Harris and Glenn ‘Kane’ Jacobs involved and the script evolves moreso. We got to put a lot of ourselves into the film – Tamara [Katherine Isabelle’s character] is Jen on a date.

J: Ha ha, only a good one. I’ve been known to take dates on Buffy~esque walks in the graveyard. I would be the first one to suggest going down to the morgue, especially to take a peek at Jacob Goodnight. It was important for all the characters to matter and be strong, but especially the girls. I like that we were able to continue on our signature of keeping our audiences guessing. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t go into much more detail. You can definitely feel our humor and sensibilities in this one.

BF: What was it like working with Kane?

S: An amazing experience. As a fan, I had inhumanly high expectations on this hero I grew up watching. Somehow, he managed to be even better than that. Glenn is so professional, so hard working, and just a genuinely wonderful human being. He’s so smart, he brought so much to making this the next evolution of Jacob Goodnight, and he is so psychically capable that we could really show off his Hulk-strength in the film. I loved working with him. I actually cannot wait to work with him again, there’s a lot of roles someone like him can play.

J: Really a dream come true. A big part of why we were so excited to come onto the film was the opportunity to meet and work with Glenn. We started watching as he was introduced as Kane on WWE. To have our lives come so full circle is incredible. And so surreal. Glenn is an amazing performer as well as an athlete. He’s just fantastic to work with. I love him.

Katherine Isabelle, star of American Mary works with the Soskas again in See No Evil 2

BF: How does See No Evil 2 fit in with your previous films?

S: I think the characters in See No Evil 2 could easily exist in a world where Badass and Mary Mason also live – there are from that same universe in our heads. It’s an art house slasher homage that is also very self aware – not many studios would let you do something like that with such a profitable franchise.

J: There’s a running theme in our films where seemingly everyday characters, people who could be you, me, our friends, get thrown into something life changing and end up getting tough and evolving. It’s very much the same in See No Evil 2. If you pay attention, you can also see the big beats for each character that also results in their outfits transforming more and more final girl as they go. We like to put a lot of heart in our films and you will care for these people that you see brutally murdered.

BF: You worked with Katharine Isabelle for a second time in See No Evil 2. Is it important to you to create a stable of actors and reliable people to work with again and again? She’s getting to a bit of a horror icon herself, as is Danielle Harris. Chelan Simmons has also been in her share of slashers. Can you tell me a bit about how you work with actors and what qualities make an actor fun to work with? Were these people you sought out to work with? Did you look to people with a reputation as horror icons?

S: We build a bit of a film family on these things, we have such an amazing crew in Vancouver – they are so good at what they do and they’ve been with us through so much, you will definitely see lots of names repeating in our various films. The same goes for the cast – you keep collaborating because there’s this magic that can happen as you keep getting more comfortable about each other. I love actors and the more I get to know them as people, the more I’m like, oh, they would be perfect doing this. Working with Katie on Mary, I got to know how ridiculously funny she is. You never see the hot girl also being the funniest one. Tamara came from us wanting to see that.

I know a lot of the actresses in SNE2 have done a ton of horror movies, that was intentional in the casting. We wanted a pedigree to the whole thing. It was so cool to work with Danielle and Chelan – they are just so good at what they do. I can’t wait to be able to work on the next thing with them. I know Danielle is about to direct her second feature and I cannot wait to see that. Can you imagine the kinds of films a woman like that will create? Badass.

J: We try to hunt down the very best people. People who love film and love what we’re doing. Life’s too short to work with dicks and it’s crazy to think people who work in film aren’t always super grateful to be where they are. We become very close with our cast and crew. They’re the people we call friends, some even family, like Katie. We love working with our friends. And actors are so capable. Just look at Michael Eklund. I could work with him on every film I do for the rest of my life and I know he’ll just keep surprising me and blowing us away with his performances.

S: We strive to build up that core. You see a lot of directors team up with the same talent because you become friends and want to do more and more with them and give them chances to play a range of different characters. I’m really so blessed to have been able to work with so many amazing people.

BF: A spoiler question…

You played with the concept of the Final Girl with the ending of See No Evil 2. How do you feel about the idea of the Final Girl?

S: I love the final girl so much. I have cheered many a Final Girl on in my living room, but I always see the Final Girl. We like playing with gender stereotypes, so Seth is the final boy. If you rewatch the film, he does all the final girl moments – love interest willing to die for to save, has an encounter with Jacob but survives, throughout loses more clothing for sexed up/battle damaged look (this was an intentional transition look for all of the cast), gives ‘everything is going to be ok’ speech, everyone else is dead, and the final impossible showdown. I hope we get to make three — Seth has more to do and Jacob’s still not dead.

J: I loved killing the Final Girl. And we killed one of horror’s true icons, Danielle Harris. She is the perfect final girl. We wanted to set up both Danielle and Katie as being potential final girls all the while building up our final boy, Seth, played by the wonderful Kaj-Erik Eriksen. Seth is a mix between Ash (Evil Dead) and Seymour (Little Shop of Horrors). He’s the hot, really sweet, nerd who turns out to be as tough as nails. I loved having him go head to head with Jacob Goodnight and just take all that damage.

BF: What projects do you have in the works at the moments?

S: There are a few things in development that we’re really excited about. A huge one is Painkiller Jane, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Craig Weeden, which is a big screen adaptation of the badass graphic novel heroine. It’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read – which makes sense because Jimmy co-created the character. It’s an honest to goodness, straight from the comic, foul languaged, super sexy, hardcore violent, kickass chick cop buddy movie with a superhuman flair. It’s like The Heat on crack.

J: We just finished up Vendetta, our first action movie starring Dean Cain, Paul “The Big Show” White, and Michael Eklund. I’m so happy with it. It’s like a Punisher movie taking place in a men’s prison. And you’ve never seen Dean Cain be this much of a badass. It’ll be out sometime in 2015. We’ve got quite a few things in development, including our high concept, original monster movie called, BOB. Nothing would make me happier than to be doing BOB next. It’s so weird and heart felt and honest and brutal and hilarious. I cannot wait to be making it.

The Soska sisters film a scene from See No Evil 2

Sylvia and Jen’s new film See No Evil 2 is currently available DVD and Blu-Ray as well as On Demand and Digital HD.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘God Help The Girl’: Sunny Glasgow Hosts a Twee Musical

The songs allow the audience access to the inner minds of the characters, which is especially helpful for a secretive character like Eve. The songs swirl into a beautiful world where shining girls dance through the streets of Glasgow like it’s their own personal playground, always dressed for a costume party in enviable vintage. Songs cut into elaborate sequences of the band playacting on golden hills in school uniforms and battling with umbrellas on courthouse steps, that seem like mini-music videos. The film is so stuffed with beauty and whimsy that it often seems hard to make room for the parts of the story that are truly ugly.

A poster for God Help The Girl which recalls Belle and Sebastian album covers
A poster for God Help The Girl, which recalls Belle and Sebastian album covers

 

The word ”twee” is generally used as a pejorative but there’s no other way to describe God Help The Girl.

Like pornography, it’s hard to define what is twee, but you know it when you see it. Pressed to explain it, there are a few reliable touchstones: striped scarves (preferably homemade), outdated mediums like vinyl and cassettes, the films of Miranda July and of course, the music of Belle and Sebastian, the legendary Scottish band led by Stuart Murdoch, God Help The Girl’s director and mastermind.

In his book, Twee: the Gentle Revolution, writer Marc Spitz explains twee as an artistic movement centering on outsiders, telling stories whose serious or even cynical core is hidden by bright colours, sweet pop songs and a general sense of buoyancy, like a sugar cookie laced with arsenic. Think of the pastel confections produced by Wes Anderson; each feature tragic deaths but they’re not what we remember. Likewise, God Help The Girl has a serious story, following Emily Browning’s Eve on her slow recovery from anorexia and depression, yet it never becomes an “issue movie.” Instead, it’s a pastiche of quirky film references and self-aware wit, all swinging to a host of bouncy, jangly pop songs.

 

The Band: Cassie, James and Eve pose in their best clothes
The Band: Cassie, James and Eve pose in their best clothes

 

God Help The Girl began as Murdoch’s side project, conceived as a 60s girl-group, a soundtrack for the film that didn’t yet exist. The songs, which told the story of a young woman, named Eve entering into a difficult adulthood, were recorded by female vocalists as God Help the Girl back in 2009 and are covered by the cast members in the film.

It begins with Eve (Browning) escaping from a psychiatric ward to go listen to a band she likes. As part of her recovery she begins writing music as way to deal with her feelings. Throughout the film, she improvises songs about her life, simple observations about her day-to-day concerns, forming an amazing soundtrack, that teeters between whimsy and melancholy.

Things pick up when she meets James (Olly Alexander), an under-appreciated musician looking for an identity and Cassie (Hannah Murray playing a version of her Skins character), an outcast who goes to “the posh school” in town. The three misfits are drawn together by their shared love of music, and form a band in a bright, sunny Glasgow, far from the grey rainy days most North Americans imagine.

 

The core band recruit musicians to form their desired pop sound
The core band recruit musicians to form their desired pop sound

 

The music is well-integrated into the story–no surprise, as the story was written around the songs. The songs allow the audience access to the inner minds of the characters, which is especially helpful for a secretive character like Eve. Late in the film, James mentions that he learned all about Eve’s past and her eating disorder through listening to her songs, the only place where she fully exposes herself. Indeed, though she seems to be a strong and self-possessed young woman, Eve can be closed off and defensive. Like James, we only gain insight into her character when she sings.

Like the 60s pop musicals it tries to emulate, the plot of God Help The Girl is essentially a vehicle to get from song to song. It works because everyone involved seems to have such faith in the material. The actors seems to feel the emotions in the songs they sing and the chemistry between the core trio is palatable. Most important, is the film’s function as an ode to art’s power to help us heal, an idea Murdoch appears to evangelize.

 

The group perform an impromptu dance, reminiscent of French New Wave
The group perform an impromptu dance, reminiscent of French New Wave

 

The film is peppered with a dizzying array of surreal visual jokes, like Maria Von Trapp, guitar case in hand, joining the line of musicians, a newspaper that proclaims itself the choice for geniuses and The Smiths’ Meat is Murder t-shirt Eve wears as she sings about cutting meat out of her diet. Dance sequences recall French New Wave classics and in many scenes, the humour recalls the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, such as the band being chased through the streets.

The songs swirl into a beautiful world where shining girls dance through the streets of Glasgow like it’s their own personal playground, always dressed for a costume party in enviable vintage. Songs cut into elaborate sequences of the band playacting on golden hills in school uniforms and battling with umbrellas on courthouse steps, that seem like mini-music videos. The film is so stuffed with beauty and whimsy that it often seems hard to make room for the parts of the story that are truly ugly.

 

Many artistically shot sequences throughout the film seem to be mini-music videos
Many artistically shot sequences throughout the film seem to be mini-music videos

 

For all the talk of Eve’s health problems, the film sure does make her thinness appealing. Though she mentions she carries everything she owns in her backpack, she has a massive, stunning wardrobe, full of skin-tight outfits that would only work on a rail-thin body and would make great thinspo for those sadly inclined. Though she left the hospital before she was deemed recovered, Eve seems to have no self-confidence issues or need to hide her weight as expected in someone with anorexia. She also mentions being happy with the size of her breasts and is comfortable beings seen naked and having sex, all of which don’t appear characteristic of a severe anorexic who quite recently had difficulty having a full meal with her shrunken stomach. Also unusual is the fact that we never see her eat. Though several songs mention her refusal to eat and her desire to recover, we never get the satisfaction of seeing her take a bite.

Each day, she counts out and takes pills for other unspecified mental health problems but the film avoids any real discussion of what else is wrong with her and of her past. We learn she left her home in Australia to follow a boy to Scotland, which hints at further mental instability but it is never elaborated on. It appears as if Murdoch figured the visual iconography of Eve holding her pills in her hands and looking sad would enough to show the depth of the character’s depression. Ultimately, Eve’s problems are boiled down to her inability to live in the adult world.

Befitting of the twee genre, God Help The Girl is tonally inconsistent, going from sappy to silly in the blink of an eye. It often feels over-long and self indulgent, as some scenes drag on longer than they should have. It’s clear Murdoch is in love with his own story and expects us to want to spend as much time in its world as he’ll allow us. Likewise, it can often be a bit too precious. It’s easy to see how it could turn some off, induce toothaches, that sort of thing, in the viewer that isn’t ready to surrender to it’s sweet sweet glory.

Eve, Cassie, and James are the sort of characters mentioned in Belle and Sebastian songs come to life. The insecure hipster boy, the ethereal dancing schoolgirl, the depressive singer who believes in the power of books and faith healing, all appear in Glasgow isolated from anyone but each other. None of their families seem to exist, nor do outside friends, besides Eve’s drug buddy who pops up out of nowhere for a short scene. What little we know of their earlier lives comes from a single conversation.

 

A ‘will-they-won’t they’ romance develops between James and Eve
A “will-they-won’t they” romance develops between James and Eve

 

As expected, James falls in love with Eve. He can’t help it, there’s something about her, mysterious and quiet as she is, that plays into his every romantic notion. Though he’s not alone. Everyone she meets seems attracted to Eve and longs to help her put herself back together. She’s irresistible and she knows it, yet we don’t hate her for it.

God Help The Girl is deceptively posed as a band origin story; you know the sort: three lost individuals come together to form a band, have their dreams of fame come true and fall into an ugly break-up and/or drug addiction. The band in God Help the Girl, forms briefly and dissolves amicably (though not without the obligatory scene of hearing their song on the radio), but it turns out, in the end, it was Eve’s story all along.

She gets on a train to go to music school in London and live a new life, with the structure she needs to function as an independent adult and we realize their summer with Eve was just a momentary phase in James and Cassie’s lives. For Eve, this summer was the last bittersweet gasp of life before becoming a real adult, her oft mentioned anxiety and though they will all remember it fondly, they will never be able to recapture it again. She is greatness and for one brief, shining moment they shared her light. There’s no question she will be a pop music legend someday and they will have known her when.

We’re not sure what will happen to the others. Eve is the singer, the songwriter and she creates their world. She allows us to think on the nature of fiction, of the stories we piece together from the raw stuff of our lives. After all the title pleads for help for Eve, she’s the girl we’re meant to focus on.

God Help The Girl is a movie that really seems meant for bored, yet artistic teenagers isolated in the suburbs and sure that no one else shares their tastes. It’s destined to live on as a cult hit, “discovered” again and again by young people–like a relic of some obscure 60s group no one else has ever heard of.

It’s the kind of movie you step out of and think, “So, there are people like me out there!”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Life After Beth’ and the Trouble With Absent Presence

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” I imagine it on ‘Saturday Night Live’: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

Poster for Life After Beth
Poster for Life After Beth

 

Horror-comedy Life After Beth is the kind of movie that’s very easy to explain.

Girl dumps Boy, Girl dies and comes back as a zombie with no memory of the break-up, Boy continues to date her even though he’s a little afraid of her.

But there’s not a lot else. Even the titular character is scarcely more than a name. After sitting through the slim 89 minutes of I Heart Huckabees writer Jeff Baena’s directorial debut, I’m still left wondering who Beth is. And what did she care about besides her boyfriend and sex?

Aubrey Plaza plays the dear departed Beth Slocum, cut down by a snake bite during a solo hike, leaving behind her stalker ex-boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan). Zach hasn’t taken her death very well. He dresses in black and ignores his parents and brother, preferring to spend time with Beth’s grieving parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) who treat him like a son. When the Slocums stop contacting him, he stalks and spies on them to find out why. Quickly, he discovers they have been hiding Beth, who has mysteriously returned from the grave, unaware of her own death.

A scheme is hatched. Beth’s parents will continue to cherish “the miracle” of her resurrection and Zach will get his girlfriend back and have a second chance to get it right and take her dancing and on hikes like she always wanted. Keeping Beth a secret is crucial, they will continue to hid her return and keep her in the dark about what had happened to her. But her sudden fits of rage, rotting body, and crazy strength make things difficult.

From Beth’s perspective this would make an intriguing premise; she is confused, strange things are happening to her body, things she can’t control, and that’s the stuff horror movies are made of. Yet, despite her lone presence in the title, the poster, and Plaza’s top billing, the film is never about Beth. The story belongs to Zach.

 

Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous
Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous

 

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” For a good while she’s the horny girlfriend who needs to be reminded not to rip her boyfriend’s clothes off at any opportunity, then she plays the jealous girlfriend who’s convinced any women her boyfriend talks to is sleeping with him, after that she’s briefly Linda Blair in The Exorcist, before finally ending the film as a rabid dog biting at anything that gets too close. I imagine it on Saturday Night Live: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

But who was she when she was alive? What does Zach love so much about Beth that he couldn’t get over her, it had to have been more than just her potential to act as a sex robot. What kind of memories do her parents cherish about her?
None of these questions is answered.

To make a film that centers around a death, that death has to mean something to the audience. There are many ways to do this, from the inherently sad (child deaths) to the anguished (and unbefitting of a comedy) mental breakdown of the surviving characters. The main problem with Life After Beth is that the titular character never once felt like a real person, a once living girl who happened to be named Beth. Instead, she felt like a construct invented by writer and quickly named for a catchy title. All she is is a girl named Beth, no more fleshed out in the finished film than she would be in a rough plot line, this guy’s girlfriend and this couple’s daughter. She matters to people but she never achieves personhood herself and so is difficult to care about.

 

Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted
Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted

 

While the film opens with a brief glimpse of a scared (still living) Beth lost in the woods and looking for cell service, this is all we see of her. As we are never allowed to know Beth; her presence as a zombie is robbed of any sense of irony or tragedy, which would make it entertaining to watch. The short grief narrative the film opens with only serves to remind us that these stories are about absence. Even when Beth returns, she is absent, a dead girl given a flesh and blood presence, yet never a voice. Throughout the film, Beth is fetishized as a dead girl, and in one scene, Zach masturbates with a scarf she had left behind.

 

Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masterbate
Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masturbate

 

Beth’s constant desire for Zach is meant as a source of humour, notably as she pops out of the roof to ask him to go for a hike. Though he was originally the one obsessively in love with her, even stalking her family, she is seen as the pathetic one. Her lust is uncontrollable and as it morphs into murderous and cannibalistic impulses, and the high female libido is painted as monstrous. Moreover, the destruction of the attractive female body is intended as a source of dark comedy and Beth is de-personified to the point where, when she finally dies again, it’s with Zach shooting her in the head to put her down, again like a rabid dog.

In this light, there is something disturbing about seeing her tied up and chained to washing machine for the last act. In order to handle her, Beth must be trapped and contained, with her boyfriend, a person she had tried to break up with, in complete control and possession of her.  The situation continues to be horrific for Beth, but but her character’s zombification means she is no longer a person with a perspective of her own. When Zach finally apologizes for how he treated her as a living person, she’s no longer there and the apology is more for him than her.

 

As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach
As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach

 

Parts of the Life After Beth reminded me of 2012’s Ruby Sparks, another film about a girlfriend who exists only as a male fantasy and to tell us something about him. However, Ruby Sparks, whether successful or not, played with this idea to expose something troubling about the stories we tell in our culture. Life After Beth makes no such commentary. Sure Zach needs to come to terms with his girlfriend’s death but Beth’s return didn’t do much to change this central fact. Throughout the film he vacillates between refusing to give her up and feeling burdened by her presence. Narratively, the film would have worked better if Beth’s resurrection occurred because Zach made a selfish wish, as would have given both him and Beth room to grow.

Toward the end, the film changes gears completely, as people everywhere begin returning from the dead. This larger zombie apocalypse creates a rift in the narrative, and expects us to shift gears, stop caring about Beth and Zach, and start caring about the fates of Zach’s family and their fight to survive.

 

Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive
Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive

 

As much as I disliked this movie, I can’t imagine how insufferable it would be without Aubrey Plaza as Beth. She’s obviously enjoying herself, playing a role so different from anything she’s done before, and it’s enjoyable to watch that. There’s definitely some fun in the role of Beth, which allows Plaza to be monstrous and unattractive.

Life After Beth tries to be a romantic comedy and a zombie movie, yet forgets how to deliver either laughs or scares. There are a few bright spots: Mrs. Slocum feeding her hands to her monster-daughter and Beth tumbling down a hill with a stove strapped to her back, but they are few and far between. The running gag, of zombies liking smooth jazz, is one of those touches that seems hilarious on paper but cloying when translated to the screen.

It’s always great to see fresh twists on old stories, but we can’t forget what made the old stories great in the first place. With no build-up of the relationship and no reason for the resurrection, there’s nothing left to care about.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

When Friendships Fray: ‘Me Without You,’ ‘Not Waving But Drowning,’ and ‘Brokedown Palace’

Not all friendships are built to last. Teenage friendships are little romances between two people–tiny beautiful, impossibly fragile things that break apart upon touch or close examination. Just as a true romantic relationship between two unformed people rarely lasts, so often we grow out of our early friendships. Because so much of growing up means developing into a person who can live in the world, films about the ends of friendships can be just as satisfying coming of age stories as the typical narratives of beginnings. Each ending after all, is the beginning of something else.

This post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

 

Not all friendships are built to last.

Teenage friendships are little romances between two people–tiny beautiful, impossibly fragile things that break apart upon touch or close examination. Just as a true romantic relationship between two unformed people rarely lasts, so often we grow out of our early friendships.

These friendships are among the most intense in your life and that intensity often burns out too fast. It can feel giddy and feverish just like a teenage romance, where you can’t bear to be apart, talk all night on the phone, keep boxes of sentimental objects and stay up all night together. But you don’t know then who you really are and this relationship, that you eat and sleep and breathe, can either end up a warm memory or, in many cases, the last barrier to true adulthood.

Though close friendships often form between larger groups, the view of teenage friendships we most often see on film is this singular sort of passionate fire. These films succeed on the strong performances of two leads, as character studies of two highly developed characters. Other people are interesting, but they never seem quite as important.

What is some interesting in these films is how they explore this one difficult question: If you’ve aways been one of two, how do you become one, a singular person without missing something? Because so much of growing up means developing into a person who can live in the world, films about the ends of friendships can be just as satisfying coming of age stories as the typical narratives of beginnings. Each ending after all, is the beginning of something else.

It can be difficult to tell what these kinds of films are saying about friendships. Are they simply too pure, to beautiful to exist in the real world? Are they things that hold us back, trap us in fantasy worlds so vivid they make real life seem like a dream (see: Heavenly Creatures)?

What about toxic friendships (see: Albatross, Ginger and Rosa) ? Teenagers are so much more vulnerable to these sorts of things because perfect symbiotic connections seem so desirable.

 

Holly follows along through Marina’s experimentation
Holly follows along through Marina’s experimentation

 

In Me Without You, a British film spanning the 1970s and 80s, Holly (Michelle Williams) and Marina (Anna Friel) initially have little in common, but develop a close, almost symbiotic, connection, due to proximity. They’re neighbors and they’re the same age. As they grow up, they follow each other into the same music and subcultures, Marina most often dragging Holly along, and it’s unclear whether they would have liked the same things if they weren’t so closely tied together. Later, when their friendship has broken down, they continue to be tied together, now by their daughters’ friendship.

For most of her life, Holly has lived in Marina’s shadow. Marina is exuberant and witty, outgoing and almost glitters in her everyday wear, more like costumes, pirates and ballerinas, then everyday outfits, she’s impossible to lose in a crowd. Meanwhile, Holly is softer and too often scared. She lives in Marina’s shadow not only because she feels most conformable there, but because Marina demands it. Marina’s brightness fascinates Holly, who casually accepts her cruelty, too nice and too needy to do anything that could hurt her. As Holly begins to come into her own and get noticed for her intelligence and beauty, Marina sees it first and does everything she can to sabotage her.

 

Mousy Holly feels overshadowed by her friend Marina
Mousy Holly feels overshadowed by her friend Marina

 

The betrayal is a little cliche. Marina sleeps with Holly’s boyfriends and subtly chips away at her self-confidence to keep Holly as her mousy, lesser friend. Throughout the decades, Holly falls in and out of her attraction to Marina’s brother Nat, and it appears that he is her soulmate. Eventually they get together, but not without the cost of Holly and Marina’s friendship.

For Holly, growing up comes to mean realizing that indulging Marina and following her demands isn’t making her happy. As the title says, Holly needs to figure out who she is without Marina and learn to be this person. The friendship ends as she realizes the Marina needs her more than she needs Marina, it’s just holding her back from growth.

Though the viewer is meant to identify with Holly, writer-director Sandra Goldbacher succeeds in giving just enough insight into Marina to understand her rationale. She is not cruel for the state of it, but is hopelessly insecure and jealous of light she sees in Holly. She tries so hard to be exciting and cultivate an alluring persona, but Holly doesn’t even have to try to be interesting. Moreover, as Holly is developed as such a sweet and intelligent, it’s hard to completely fault her judgement. At different points her in life, Marina was the friend she needed. And she loves her, she can’t be all bad.

 

Alice and Darlene enjoy vacationing together before college
Alice and Darlene enjoy vacationing together before college

 

Likewise, Alice (Claire Danes) in Brokedown Palace is the wild, even fearless friend who tries to convince quiet Darlene (Kate Beckinsale) to live a little. You’ve either been this girl or you know her, either way, you’re a little frightened (and thrilled) by her influence. Alice convinces Darlene to take chances she otherwise would have avoided, usually things Darlene had secretly wanted to do anyway. Alice convinces her to go to Thailand, to sneak into the pool at a fancy hotel and hang out with some skeevy seeming guys they meet. This ends up getting the girls sent to a Thai prison for smuggling heroin they (allegedly) had no idea was in their bags.

Suffering through prison together, the girls’ friendship becomes strained
Suffering through prison together, the girls’ friendship becomes strained

 

It’s any traveller’s biggest fear and the girls, fresh out of high school, not at all streetwise and sure being American grants them certain privileges, make all the worst possible decision at every juncture, but really the horror of their imprisonment is overshadowed by the horror of betrayal. Alice and Darlene find themselves in (an often pretty racist portrayal of) Thailand where everyone is poking at them and yelling in languages they can’t understand with no one to turn to except each other. But as time passes and it becomes clearer and clearer that this is not just a misunderstanding, they lose their faith in each other. Darlene’s parents have always hated Alice and tell her she deserves to be in prison for being a bad influence on their daughter. Darlene even begins to agree, believing Alice forced her to do things against her will. In the end, Alice pays the price for being the wild friend, accepting for responsibility for the crime, and sacrifices her life for Darlene’s freedom by offering to serve both their prison terms.

Due to the film’s ambiguity, its ultimately unclear whose fearlessness was their downfall. Was Alice telling the truth when she accepts full responsibility or had Darlene attempted to strike at independence and excitement on her own?

 

The friendship between Sara and Adele feels familiar and realistic
The friendship between Sara and Adele feels familiar and realistic

 

Devyn Waitt’s ethereal indie, Not Waving But Drowning, begins with Adele (Vanessa Ray) and Sara (Megan Guinan) literally breaking apart. High school is over and Adele is leaving their tiny Florida town for New York City, where she imagines bigger and better things await. Sara, the more level-headed of the duo, is staying behind and continuing to live a teenage life, she sleeps in her parents’ house and rides to and from her volunteer job with her father.

Yet through their separate journeys, the girls attempt to maintain the symbiosis that had kept them afloat so far. On their own, they have a host of adventures, both good and bad, that become increasingly difficult to share with each other. For Adele, life in New York is not as glamorous as she imagines, she moves into a messy apartment with four guys she barely knows and gets a job cleaning office buildings. Things seem to improve when she becomes friends with a girl who lives across the street, who seems to have the glamorous life she’d dreamt of.

Meanwhile, Sara teaches art classes at a senior’s centre and finds it difficult to get the residents interested. She is drawn to Sylvia (Lynn Cohen), a rebellious elderly woman who smokes pot in her room and leads trends at the centre.

Not Waving But Drowning cribs from two very different coming of age templates: an older person-young person intergenerational friendship and a silent reaction and recovery from trauma narrative.

 

Sara indulges her rebellious side by spending time with Sylvia
Sara indulges her rebellious side by spending time with Sylvia

 

Separated, they try to be figure out what kind of people to be without each other. For Sarah, this means attempting to replace her more daring friend with this woman who reminds her of Adele. Sylvia even becomes a role model to her, as she is fascinated by a photograph of young Sylvia in New York at her age. Later, when she visits Adele, she attempts to recreate the picture.

Adele’s road is harder. Her new friend Kim (Isabelle McNally) abandons her when she is raped on a rooftop and she spends a long time struggling with the event. She has a hard time connecting to the world she so recently lived in, the world of her friendship with Sarah, riding in cars and singing, trading inside jokes and leaning on each other. In picking Kim, she had attempted to chose a friend completely different from Sarah, someone more like the person she wanted to be herself. As Kim disappoints her, her own view of herself and what she can be is shattered.

 

Adele struggles to create an identity of her own
Adele struggles to create an identity of her own

 

The friendship between the girls is strained, but it is not irrevocably damaged. By the end, they’ve had lives apart and have secrets they keep from each other, something they never had before, but they still feel comfortable sleeping in the same bed like children. Sara plans to move to New York, but will this fix things? Can they ever be as close as they once were?

The true test of a friendship isn’t whether is lasts, but who it lets you be. These teenage friendships encouraged a symbiosis that made it impossible for the girls to live alone and that was why they faltered. We need more films that explore the toxic aspects of friendships, particularly teenage friendships, to help us learn to recognize them.

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Lessons from Underrated Coming of Age Flicks: Part 2: Back To School Edition

Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year. With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.

See Part 1 here: Lessons from Underrated Coming of Age Flicks

Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year.

It’s also when you were a bundle of nerves. Will my classes be too hard? Will I wear the right thing? Will anyone want to hang out with me?

I still feel that way in September, and I don’t think it’s an accident; I still have a lot to learn about life–we all do.

With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.

 

The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.
The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.

 

All I Wanna Do/Strike!/The Hairy Bird  (written and directed by Sarah Kenochan, 1998 )

It’s 1963 and headstrong Odette “Odie” Sinclair (perennial 90s coming of age star Gaby Hoffman) is being sent to Miss Godard’s Preparatory School, an all-girl boarding school, against her will. Her parents have discovered she plans to have sex with her boyfriend and believe the all-girl environment will keep her safe from boys. It’s this tension between ambitious girls and their growing attraction to men that sets the films conflict in motion.

At Miss Godard’s, Odie joins the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Ravioli), a group of girls (including Kirsten Dunst) with the shared belief that they can be more than wives and mothers. When they discover plans for the school to go co-ed, the D.A.R. girls are torn. They like boys and want them about, but at the same time are concerned that the pressure to look good and appear feminine would detract from their learning. In addition, they believe the teachers will concentrate on teaching the boys as their education is seen as more important. First, they try to sabotage the plans and make the boys at a near-by school appear as sex-crazed drunks, then they take over the school and hold a strike.

Writer/director Sarah Kenochan based the film loosely on her own school experiences in that period and it definitely feels true to life. In addition to being immensely quotable (“Up Your Ziggy With a Wa-Wa Brush!”), it’s packed with memorable, off-beat characters and great 60s fashion. Though it’s set in the 60s, the central conflict of girls fighting for the quality of their education and their ability to be successful career women is something we can all relate to.

Lesson: Though many think otherwise, feminism doesn’t mean hating men. You can have crushes and romances without giving up your self and your ambitions. It may have been harder to learn these lessons in the 60s, especially as they didn’t always appear true, but unfortunately women are still fighting for recognition of these basic truths.

 

Hanna finds herself attracted to her best friend
Hanna finds herself attracted to her best friend

 

Emporte-Moi/Set Me Free (directed by Léa Pool and written by Pool, Nancy Huston, Monique H. Messier and Isabelle Raynault, 1999)

In 1963, the Canadian province of Quebec was having a crisis of identity (and many feel it still is). Much of the population felt they needed to their own country rather than a part of Canada. This identity crisis is mirrored in teenage Hanna (Karine Vanasse). Her life is marked by in-betweens: she is not a child or an adult, she is not technically Catholic or Jewish (as her mother is Catholic and her father is Jewish), and as she begins to experiment, she finds she is neither straight nor gay.
She attempts to create an identity for herself by imitating her favourite film star, French New Wave star Anna Karina in the Godard film, Vivre Sa Vie. In one scene, the film cuts between shots of her and Anna Karina doing the same dance. This imitation gets her into trouble when she experiments with prostitution, which she sees as romantic because of Karina’s role in the Godard film, and is raped. After her attack, she finds her own voice by picking up a video camera and creating her own images.
The film feels earnest, identifying its main characters as a clearly working class family, several of whom are struggling with depression and highlighting the appreciation of movies and music so crucial to teenage dreams.

Lesson: You are never going to fit into an image. Your glamourous stars may have tragic pasts, you may have uncool conflicts and interests. Our favourite characters and stars even have fictional, streamlined images meant to tell us the stories we want to hear. They’re never as awkward or as painful as real life.

 

Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid
Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid

 

Guinevere (written and directed by Audrey Wells, 1999)

Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley, now an acclaimed writer-director herself) is Harvard bound and not happy about it. She’s an overlooked younger sister from a buttoned-up, patrician family concerned with status and wealth. Though she plans to attend law school in the fall, she secretly feels uncomfortable about the decision though she’s never thought about what other kind of life there could be for her.

Enter Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a 40-something bohemian photographer, and the only person who sees her secret discomfort. They become lovers and Connie invites her to move in with him, his latest in a long line of muses all of which he calls, “Guinevere.” As a Guinevere, she has to learn some kind of art (Connie’s practices are often referred to as a school she will eventually graduate from), and Harper decides to take up photography. She follows him as an apprentice, not out of her passion for it, but because she enjoys seeing what he does. When she begins to enjoy it and gains confidence, however he is weary about even letting her take a single picture.

Guinevere is set apart from other films with similar stories of romance between young girls and older men, by the constant assertion that Harper is 19 and the relationship is between two adults, though they are often posed as teacher and student. Great care is also taken to show the reality of the relationship, as Harper ends up having to work to support him as his alcoholism and bohemian principles won’t let him. He is not a “sugar daddy” that takes her every care away.

Despite this, it’s unclear what the film’s stance on Connie is, as it makes his program look quite attractive. It helps Harper come out of her shell and establish a fulfilling career. When she returns to him years after their break-up, she is very affectionate toward him and sees it as her responsibility to take care of him as he dies.

Lesson: There’s a fine line between discovering your passion and coming into your own. Be sure you’re really discovering who you are, not who others, your family, your friends, even your mentors and lovers, want you to be.

 

Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation
Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation

 

Sassy Pants (written and directed by Coley Sohn, 2012)

To Bethany Pruitt (Ashley Rickards), pink is the colour of oppression. All her life she’s been homeschooled and forcibly sheltered by her impossibly, even cartoonishly cruel mother June (Anna Gunn). June forbids her to go out with people her own age, has as never let her have a job and steals the money she has saved to go to college. Later on, when Bethany escapes, June even tricks her into coming home by telling her her grandmother is dying. As a budding fashion designer, Bethany’s predicament comes to her clearest in the wardrobe full of baby pink clothes her mother has bought for her.

So begins Bethany’s trip to independence. She packs up whatever clothes are salvageable, moves in with her father and his boyfriend and gets a job at a cool clothing shop where she falls in with a bad crowd and finds herself manipulated by a co-worker. But Bethany doesn’t stay down for long, she works hard and enjoys some success designing clothes for a small store. It’s refreshing how the fact that it is very hard to make it in the fashion world is never on Bethany’s mind, she’s just trying to break into its periphery.

The portrayal of Bethany’s mother, June, is the most contentious aspect of the film. She appears to be a terrible mother and possible sociopath through most of the film; however, it’s possible to interpret this view of her as Bethany’s point of view. In the last act, June’s humanity is carefully revealed and she becomes a sympathetic character.

Lesson: Even the worst monsters have their human moments. You don’t have to forgive the cruelty but you can try to understand it.

 

Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor
Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor

 

Dear Lemon Lima (written and directed by Suzi Yoonessi, 2009)

Dear Lemon Lima is a charming story about outcasts fighting back, not with force but with friendship. It follows 13-year-old Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong), a half Eskimo (note: Vanessa and the other characters refer to her as Eskimo, though this is not usually seen as a politically correct term) girl attending an Alaskan prep school on an ethnic scholarship. Vanessa is uncomfortable with the Eskimo cultural identity because her mother is Caucasian and she does not have a relationship with her father and his culture. It represents otherness to her, so she clings to her whiteness, claiming “I’m from Fairbanks!” as proof of normalcy.

To complicate matters, she has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Phillip, whom she believes is her true love. They had a very close relationship, where she called him “Strawberry” and he called her “Onion.” The fact that Vanessa sees herself an a onion, sour and not easy to like, is interesting. She yearns to fit in and be popular, choosing to use the ordinary backpack from her ex’s parents over the cool sealskin bag from her grandmother. In school, she finds herself clumped into the FUBAR (military slang meaning fucked up beyond all recognition) group. The other outsiders who aren’t worried about their status and feel they have reclaimed the word FUBAR, are ready to befriend her, but Vanessa brushes them off.

It’s this that originally makes Vanessa difficult to identify with. In addition, Philip is so ridiculously terrible its hard to believe she still wants him. Then again, she’s a teenage girl blinded by love and sure popularity is the only important goal in life, so she’s probably more like most of us than we’d care to remember. Eventually she realizes she’s too good for Philip and becomes the leader and advocate of the FUBARs so it’s clear she realizes her mistakes.

An interesting facet of the film is its examination of cultural appropriation. Each year, the school holds a competition called the Snowstorm Survivor championship where the school’s all-white student body (Vanessa is the sole native student) compete in events inspired by native games. These activities include a cringe inducing scene where white students dress up in eskimo costumes and do elaborate cultural dances. In addition, Vanessa realizes her scholarship was sponsored by a known racist who instituted the program as a PR move. By the end of the film she connects to her Eskimo heritage by forming a Snowstorm Survivor team that values the principles of the World Eskimo Olympics, a games intended to bring people together rather than tear them apart through competition.

Lesson: Cheer for everyone, have fun and don’t worry about pointless competition and popularity contests. You’ll regret the friends and the fun you didn’t have.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Sex, Silver Service, and Fairy Tales: ‘Sleeping Beauty’

In her debut feature, 2011’s ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy, a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.

Poster for Sleeping Beauty
Poster for Sleeping Beauty

 

In her debut feature, 2011’s Sleeping Beauty, director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy (Emily Browning), a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.

As a character, Lucy is defined by what we as an audience don’t know about her, the blank spaces in her characterization that match those in her working life and it is as if we have slept through parts of the film along with Lucy. Her passivity in life mirrors her sleeping, as she moves around, distant from her surroundings and unattached to anyone. She is also indifferent to her job, in one scene she haphazardly applies lipstick and is told to take the work seriously, as “it is not a game.” Lucy’s narrative arc is her process of waking from the stupor she has existed in.

Lucy is shot several other times in silent, passive positions. There are prolonged sequences of her sleeping, both in her original student apartment and her luxury pad, blinded by her sleep mask, as well as sitting alone while waiting at the bar, and on her way to meet her boss, Clara (Rachael Blake). Much of the film actually happens around Lucy while she waits, listens, and sleeps. Even when she is awake, things are done to her and her body: she sleeps with strangers because of a coin toss, endures a painful bikini wax and a test where she is examined like an animal as part of her job interview, and has lipstick roughly applied to her mouth, meant to match her labia. There is a marked focus on Lucy’s mouth throughout the film, from the opening where a scientist puts a tube down her throat as an experiment to the end where she hides a camera in her mouth and is later awakened by mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Lucy’s only real connection is with her ailing friend Birdmann
Lucy’s only real connection is with her ailing friend Birdmann

 

However, there are moments of rare activity from Lucy, usually brought about by unfortunate circumstances, where is person beneath her icy shell is revealed. She tends to a sickly friend, Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) and gets into bed with him when he overdoses, though she makes no effort call for help. More crucially, she becomes active when she decides, without an provocation, that she wants to know what happens when she is asleep. Though she this would allow the men to be blackmailed, she purchases and smuggles in a small camera.

Early on, the men who will come to be Lucy’s clients are introduced as a dramatis personae at the silver service dinner which suggests they are members of a secret society. This suggests they are microcosms of different types of clients of sex workers, such as the one who is abusive and takes out his frustrations on her as a woman he is allowed to beat inside of a wife, and the one who falls in love with her and just wants to hold her.

 

At the silver service dinner, Lucy is set apart for her youth and beauty
At the silver service dinner, Lucy is set apart for her youth and beauty

 

Lucy is much younger than the other women in the film and her youth, beauty and pale coloring cause her to be placed on a pedestal. As the silver service dinner, she is covered up with virginal white lingerie while the other women wear black bras with cut outs that reveal their breasts. She is the sole women in white and the main attraction, and even when she makes clumsy mistakes, she is continuously praised.

Because of the value placed in Lucy’s beauty, there is a tension between her and Clara. She scoffs at Clara’s suggestion that her vagina is a temple worthy of respect and ignores her warning that the money earned from her work should be seen only as a temporary windfall not a permanent income she can depend on. These scenes suggest Clara may have been in Lucy’s position one day and aged out of the role. In light at the story’s fairy tale connections, it is interesting that a woman, Clara, is the one who puts her to sleep and looks at her as a commodity.

Lucy is examined by Clara before given the job
Lucy is examined by Clara before given the job

 

In the film’s extended and graphic nude scenes, Lucy’s passive, often sedated body can also be examined by aroused audiences, a notion that suggests audiences use nude star as Lucy’s clients do, as she can never know what they do with her image. Once the nude image is out there, it, like Lucy’s consent to be used by the men while sedated, cannot be controlled and consent cannot be rescinded.

In addition, her motivations for agreeing to this work are left unexamined. Unlike films like Belle De Jour, where a bored woman turns to sex work without seeming financial need, it is never suggested that anything Lucy enters into is her fantasy. Instead, it seems to be something she does without thinking, a path she enters down because she cannot think of anything else to do, and only late into it, when she realizes she is making good money, does she begin to live in the luxury it affords her.

 

Lucy burns her earnings: is the money unneeded or is she unstable?
Lucy burns her earnings: is the money unneeded or is she unstable?

 

However, the constant suggestions of traumas in Lucy’s life: her relationship with Birdmann, mentions of her mother, and of the absence of family or friends, as well as her casual proposal to an acquaintance who alludes to parts of her character he finds flawed, may suggest a conflicted or even ailing mental status. In some scenes, Lucy, as a college student, appears to have great need for money, as she allows herself to be used for science experiments, works in an office doing filing and photocopies and lives in  grotty apartment with roommates who are openly apprehensive to her about her failure to pay rent. In one scene where she burns the money she has earned from silver service waitressing, suggesting she either feels no need for the money or has become mired in the surreal sort of magic in the film and barely registers the experience was real. Because she stares at the burning money as if it has cast a spell over her, the second possibility seems most likely.

 

Lucy consents to be used for science experiments
Lucy consents to be used for science experiments

 

Sleeping Beauty also raises questions of whether sex work is unfairly stigmatized and separated from other menial work. It is suggested that Lucy, highly confident and assured of her attractiveness as she is, has taken her looks into account and believes sex work would be easier and more lucrative than her other jobs. It is also posed as not dissimilar to consenting to be a guinea pig for science experiments with uncertain results, as she had previously done.

Though she has consented to the sexual nature of her sleep work, Lucy is not even given an opportunity to consent to her involvement in her final client’s suicide, plans which were clearly known to Clara as she appears unsurprised he is dead. In this final scene, Lucy realizes that her actions have weight, even if she doesn’t remember them, as she becomes part of these men’s lives. By signing over her body and memory, she allows them ownership of her and knowledge of her as well as agreeing to trust they will not penetrate her. Many of our most beloved fairy tales romanticize passive, sleeping women, such as the original version of Sleeping Beauty, where the prince rapes the unconscious girl. Though Lucy gives her consent, it is unclear whether person can ever consent to something that would happen while they were unconscious as there is no way she can object if she changes her mind or it crosses the line.

It is questionable whether Lucy can consent to things that would happen while she is not conscious
It is questionable whether Lucy can consent to things that would happen while she is not conscious

 

Depending on one’s interpretation of Lucy’s mental state throughout the film, its ending can be taken one of two ways. Either it suggests, Lucy, a literal Sleeping Beauty is waking up to the reality of her life and can begin to live a “normal life” or she is entering into a mental breakdown she has been staving off with her detachment. In addition, the dead man lying in beside her may remind her of Birdmann, whose death she did not fully grieve over and suggests she has been forcing herself not to become attached to him either. With either interpretation, Lucy regains her autonomy and awareness of reality only after negative events, which casts her sex work and her sexual encounters in a wholly negative light. She awakens into the film’s stark reality, where there are no happily ever afters even when the cinematography is this lovely.

As Lucy awakes, not with a kiss but with a slap to the face, it becomes clear that Leigh’s tale of detachment is no fairy tale.

________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Talking Horse Anchors Adult Comedy For Everyone: ‘Bojack Horseman’

Most surprising of all was the content. ‘Bojack Horseman’ is a late night style comedy that doesn’t shut anyone out. Though the series abounds with the typical crude humor, it’s threaded through with a surprising amount of feminism, nothing I’d expect at first glance.
There’s no shortage of fascinating female characters, both major and minor.

Bojack Horseman, my latest comedy binge-watch, was a real surprise. I’d heard nothing about it before it showed up on Netflix, but I gave it a try. I’m glad it I did, it was super fun time that left me wanting more. Thankfully, Netflix has already renewed it for a second season.

 

Theme song image from Bojack Horseman
Theme song image from Bojack Horseman

 

Everyone’s favorite magician, Will Arnett, stars as Bojack, a formerly famous 90s sitcom star, conceited womanizer, and literal man-horse struggling through a strange version of Hollywood that keeps our pop cultural touchstone and ads anthropomorphic animals. Cats chase dangling strings on the treadmill, birds at the window are paparazzi, and two dogs converse like stereotypical annoying TV women about how much they love chocolate even though it could kill them.

Arnett is joined by a great cast, a veritable who’s who of beloved comedic actors, among them Alison Brie, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, and Amy Sedaris. Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul takes a comedic term and gives an unexpected, often scene-stealing performance as Bojack’s slacker roommate who’s obsessed with composing a rock opera.

Most surprising of all was the content. Bojack Horseman is a late night style comedy that doesn’t shut anyone out. Though the series abounds with the typical crude humor, it’s threaded through with a surprising amount of feminism, nothing I’d expect at first glance.

 

Bojack’s agent and girlfriend Princess Carolyn often has complicated schemes
Bojack’s agent and girlfriend Princess Carolyn often has complicated schemes

 

There’s no shortage of fascinating female characters, both major and minor. First off, Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris, who should really be in more things) is, in addition to being a giant pink Persian cat, Bojack’s agent and on-again/off-again girlfriend. She’s is driven and goal-obsessed, and in her dynamic with Bojack maintains the unique skill of compartmentalizing, speaking to him either as agent or lover. With her Machiavellian schemes and air-tight manipulations, she might even be the closest thing the series has to a villain, besides Bojack’s colossal ego. Sadly, her role begins to peter out towards the end of the season, though her remaining plot line, about unknowingly dating Vincent Adultman, three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, is worthy off-the-wall material.

 

Diane gives Naomi Watts tips on how to play a complex character
Diane gives Naomi Watts tips on how to play a complex character

 

As a show set in a Hollywood, Bojack Horseman also makes several stirring points satirizing celebrity culture. Naomi Watts shows up for a episode to play a role in a movie based on Bojack’s life, ironically because she is tired of getting complicated, three-dimensional roles. When the role becomes much meatier, she gets frustrated and loses interest in the movie. Much seen but little remembered character actress Margo Martindale appears multiple times as a sort of actress for hire. Fed up with the limited roles normally offered to her as an older woman, she accepts roles offered to her by Bojack, which include posing as a bank robber and pulling off a real bank heist. Ultimately she turns to a life of crime and relishes her time in jail because she considers it the role of a lifetime.

Most fascinating are Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal) and Diane Nygen (Alison Brie), the most important women in Bojack’s life. Sarah Lynn was his TV daughter on the sitcom Horsin’ Around and today is a washed-up former pop princess, crucified by the media who have no use for her now that she’s turned 30. In flashbacks to her teenage years, we see her as a self-obsessed young woman attempting to rebel against the cutesy little girl image with songs that twist her TV nickname, prickly pear into a vaginal euphemism. All her music is about sex and she announces on a talk show that she plans to be sexy forever. But when she hits 30, she’s replaced by new it-girl Sextina Aquafina. Sextina says she grew up with Sarah Lynn’s music, but she is now irrelevant and has no reason to be famous anymore.

 

Bojack tries to fix his TV daughter, Sarah Lynn
Bojack tries to fix his TV daughter, Sarah Lynn

 

Today, Sarah Lynn is like many of our former child stars. She’s dramatic and out of control, and spends her time popping pills, partying, and trying to kill herself when her boyfriend breaks up with her. Her relationship with Bojack is incredibly complicated, though she’s always looked at him as a father figure and he sees her as a surrogate daughter, they end up sleeping together when Bojack decides to try to “fix her.” Sarah Lynn rightfully calls him out on this, yelling at him for claiming to know how she feels and trying to be her savior. She tells him she has been exploited her whole life, first by her mother, a stage-mom, then by the scores of men who write her every day to tell her she is the first person they ever masturbated to. Bojack, she feels, has no right to try to be her father or her lover.

 

Young Sarah Lynn looked to Bojack as a father figure
Young Sarah Lynn looked to Bojack as a father figure

 

Diane is a writer who meets Bojack when he hires her to ghostwrite his memoirs. Though she is meant to be desirable and is described as attractive, Diane is drawn with an average woman’s body and wears a boxy jacket and thick glasses. In fact, she looks a lot like Daria, a show she’d probably love. The main character and others,  fall in love with her and most of the first season is a love triangle revolving around her. Although love triangles are a bit of a tired plot device, it was refreshing to see one involving such a realistic idea of a woman. Diane is no two dimensional dream girl. She’s a writer with a thriving career and intense interests and opinions. She’s sarcastic and well-informed, but she can also be self-centered and brutally ambitious, such as in plot line towards the end of the season where she attempts to publish an unflattering portrayal of Bojack without his permission. It’s crucial that Diane is never made to look like an evil seductress who manipulates Bojack. She’s just a person and even though she is eventually vindicated, it’s acknowledged that it was a terrible thing to do.

 

Bojack falls for his feminist ghostwriter, Diane
Bojack falls for his ghostwriter, a third wave feminist named Diane

 

Diane identifies as a third wave feminist, but is unsure what that means for her. In one scene, she enters into a long monologue about pop singer Sarah Lynn who she claims not to think much about. She’s conflicted, on one hand she appreciates how Sarah Lynn has reclaimed her sexuality but on the other, she questions whether it is truly possible to do so in a patriarchal society.

Diane is also an interesting conversation point for discussions of race in animation. The character is Vietnamese, yet she is voiced by a white actress. Though I loved Alison Brie in the role, this casting made me question whether there is a distinction between racebent casting in live action and animated programs. Unlike stereotypical animated characters, like Apu on The Simpsons, Diane does not have either a subtle or exaggerated Vietnamese accent, so there’d be no specific distinction between her and a Vietnamese actress in the role. But does it matter whether white actors lend their voices to animated POCs?

We must not forget that any media project, especially these days, has a meta-textual component, such as interviews, photo shoots, recommendations, and career opportunities for its stars and creators. Though Brie is excellent, this could have been a great opportunity for a Vietnamese actress to make a name for herself. I’m not sure what to think on the issue or whether it is indeed an issue, it just occurred to me as an interesting idea to consider. Kudos to the team behind Bojack for creating an Asian-American woman character to play such an integral part of the story regardless.

 

Diane is often frustrated with her happy-go-lucky boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter
Diane is often frustrated with her happy-go-lucky boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter

 

Though on multiple occasions the show mentions an in-world personality test, “Zoe or Zelda,” that reduces each person to one of two types, the women on the show are not so easily reduced to virgins or whores. Sensible Diane has a vibrant sex life with her dog-boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter, while sex-pot Sarah Lynn has given a great deal of thought to her image and desires to control it. It’s great touches like these, and its intricate animal-person analogies that make Bojack Horseman worthy of a watch. Other than its covert feminism, the most unique thing about the program is its sequential story. Unlike most adult animated comedies, that tell one-off self-contained stories, the first season unfolds as a complete a well-paced story arc.

Of course, if you’re not into late night comedies, Bojack may not be the show for you. But I recommend giving it a chance. It starts slow, but only gets better.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘The One I Love’ and the World’s Strangest Marriage Retreat

If you’ve seen an ad or trailer for ‘The One I Love,’ you probably still don’t know much about it. After watching a trailer you’d think it’s a movie about a couple going in and out of doors. All of film’s advertising hinted at, but never revealed the Charlie Kaufman-esque twist at the heart of its story, telling intrigued audiences only that an amazing twist existed and that critics agreed that it would spoil the film to reveal it. Which is pretty odd, because the twist in question takes place only 20 minutes in. Right off the bat I should probably tell you I’m going to spoil this movie, mostly because I want to talk about it.

Poster for The One I Love
Poster for The One I Love

 

If you’ve seen an ad or trailer for The One I Love, you probably still don’t know much about it. After watching a trailer you’d think it’s a movie about a couple going in and out of doors. All of film’s advertising hinted at, but never revealed the Charlie Kaufman-esque twist at the heart of its story, telling intrigued audiences only that an amazing twist existed and that critics agreed it would spoil the film to reveal it.

Which is pretty odd, because the twist in question takes place only 20 minutes in. Right off the bat I should probably tell you I’m going to spoil this movie, mostly because I want to talk about it.

The One I Love, Charlie McDowell’s directorial debut, is a very small film on paper. The vast majority of the thing takes between lead actors Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men and Top of the Lake, and Mark Duplass (The League, Safety Not Guaranteed), who play Sophie and Ethan, a couple on the brink of divorce. Sophie is still reeling from the news of Ethan’s infidelity and for his part, Ethan is frustrated by his inability to recreate the romantic gestures that used to come so naturally. As Ted Danson, who steps in for about five minutes to play the couple’s marriage counselor, tells them, they are no longer in harmony. His prescription? A weekend at his idyllic country estate, supposedly to rekindle their romance.

 

Sophie and Ethan are a couple on the brink of divorce
Sophie and Ethan are a couple on the brink of divorce

 

McDowell and writer Justin Lader use this familiar set-up to lull viewers into false sense of comfort. It all seems on track to be another feel-good Hollywood fluff-fest in the tradition of Hope Springs and Couples Retreat.

And it is, but only for a short while. On the first night, Sophie and Ethan make dinner together, get high, have sex in the guesthouse, and rediscover the playful spontaneity of their earlier relationship. They seem to be back in sync, until Sophie returns to the main house and discovers Ethan remembers nothing about their night together. The next morning, Ethan wakes to find Sophie happily preparing his breakfast with no awareness of the previous night’s fight. He knows something truly strange is going on when he realizes the breakfast she’s made includes bacon (“You hate it when I eat bacon,” he accuses).

These strange confusions keep piling up until Sophie and Ethan realize that when one of them enters the guesthouse alone, they encounter a doppelgänger of their partner. It seems like an outrageous and complicated twist, but the gradual revelation, skilled direction and comedic dancing around the conclusion make it appear strangely natural.

Sophie and Ethan’s doppelgängers are not exact copies but idealized version of the couple. They each represent the fantasy each person has of their partner and what they have been missing. Fake Ethan is playful and athletic and wears contacts instead of the glasses Sophie hates. He’s sensitive. He likes to goof around and play little games and enjoys Sophie’s idiosyncrasies. Most importantly, he would never dream of cheating on her and even apologizes for Ethan’s cheating in a way that melts Sophie’s heart.

Fake Sophie is clearly inspired by Ethan’s attraction to 50s housewives. She rises early to cook him a full and very greasy breakfast, as she is clad in satin and lace and chirps at him with perpetual enthusiasm. However, Ethan never displays any sexual interest towards this version of Sophie, preventing her from being a fetishistic sex robot. Instead, it is Sophie who is tempted by Fake Ethan and displays both sexual and romantic attraction toward him. A love triangle quickly develops between Sophie and the two Ethans, with Fake Sophie swept off to the sidelines as a mere distraction.

 

Elisabeth Moss subtly portrays the differences between Real Sophie and Fake Sophie with slight changes in hairstyle and expression
Elisabeth Moss subtly portrays the differences between Real Sophie and Fake Sophie with slight changes in hairstyle and expression

 

Both actors portray two physically identical versions of their characters who seem completely different just based on their voices, facial expression and small differences in hairstyle. Through Moss gives a particularly impressive performance, softening her voice and giving flirtatious looks as Fake Sophie, she isn’t given nearly as much opportunity to shine as Duplass. Moss is able to hint at hidden depths in both her characters, transforming them from mere hero and villain to three dimensional characters.

For his part, Duplass is great, highlighting the difference between schlubby real Ethan and cunning Fake Ethan just by adding or removing his glasses, mussing up his hair and subtly contorting his face. Sophie quickly falls in love with Fake Ethan and it’s easy to see why. He gives her the understanding she craves, allows romantic moments to unfold without contrivance and tells her exactly what she wants to hear about Ethan’s reasons for being unfaithful. It’s clear  that the gulf between the man Sophie wants him to be and the man really he is ever widening. More and more, Fake Ethan seems like the man she should be with. Especially as the real Ethan spies on their time together, after agreeing to give her her privacy and pretending to be Fake Ethan to seduce her, a betrayal which makes Sophie feel violated.

As the conflict worsens, the film focuses on Ethan’s point of view, shifting away from the original marital conflict and into a more standard love triangle plot, only with Ethan competing against himself for his wife’s affection.

 

Ethan grows jealous of Sophie’s attraction to Fake Ethan and spies on them together
Ethan grows jealous of Sophie’s attraction to Fake Ethan and spies on them together

 

As Ethan and Sophie’s relationship weakens, the doppelgängers get stronger and are allowed more free movement, eventually leaving the guesthouse and acquiring cell phones. The whole thing is turned upside down midway through when the real couple are confronted by their doubles and the most awkward double date in history ensues.

Interestingly, the doppelgängers appear to be actual people with their own concerns and lives, which do not revolve around Ethan and Sophie. Like real Ethan, Fake Sophie feels she is losing the love of her life to another and her point of view is given just enough space in the film to be tantalizing.

 

Fake Sophie, reminiscent of a 50s housewife, is an intriguing character and a wasted opportunity
Fake Sophie, reminiscent of a 50s housewife, is an intriguing character and a wasted opportunity

 

This is where I felt the film went off the rails.

I breathed a sign of relief early on when the film appeared to abandon the always unsatisfying path of trying to explain the supernatural element. Unfortunately the last third of the film stumbles around through establishing a mythology. Here, filmmakers appear to have grown bored with exploring Sophie and Ethan’s crippled marriage; instead The One I Love becomes full-on science fiction and a creeping sense of dread falls over the proceedings, though the film never commits to making the situation seem truly dangerous instead of goofy dangerous. An explanation for the magic of the guesthouse is hastily introduced, leaving more questions than it answers, as well as a frustrating amount of plot holes. Based on the care put into making the doubles feel natural, I didn’t feel the film needed any sort of explanation. Indeed, it stripes away the naturalness from Ethan and Sophie’s conversations, forcing them into repetitive arguments.

 

Ethan’s doppelgänger seems like a perfect match for Sophie
Ethan’s doppelgänger seems like a perfect match for Sophie

 

The last few minutes are particularly unsatisfying and confusing, giving us a variation of the cliche “shoot her!” “no, shoot her!” from most doppelgänger stories.

Overall, the film’s eventual shift to toward sci-fi dilutes the message it intends to convey. Rather than ending on the relationship and our concerns of whether harmony has been restored, viewers are left questioning one last sci-fi twist that seems plucked from an entirely different movie. In the end, the film doesn’t deliver on the message its premise implies: that we must come to terms with the flaws in our partners and learn that if they were perfect, they would be a stranger to us. But I’m not sure if the long strange trip of the film wasn’t all the better for subverting this expectation.

After watching the film it’s amusing to see how slyly the film’s promotion alluded to the twist. The film’s poster shows Sophie and Ethan half submerged in water, so their reflection take up half the available space. And official summaries for the film describe the purpose of the retreat as an attempt to “discover their better selves.”

While the ending got quite muddled, the story was full of twists and turns and glided smoothly from plot shift to plot shift. Moss and Duplass deliver captivating performances as both Sophie and Ethan and their mirror images, complementing each other perfectly. It is a joy to watch them deftly portray subtle changes in personality and opinion.

They are aided by a creative script and skilled direction, which dare the viewer to think (perhaps uncomfortably) about their own relationships and the self they present to the world.

Where the film missteps, with its attempt to explain where the doppelgängers come from, could have been avoided with a lesson from Sophie. After discovering their doubles, she suggests it’s just a magic trick–the best experience comes from enjoying the mystery.

__________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

The Superman Exists and She is American: Scarlett Johansson in ‘Lucy’

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.
It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

Posters for Lucy showed only Scarlett Johansson
Posters for Lucy showed only Scarlett Johansson

 

Lucy’s release is a bit of a David and Goliath story.

In one corner, you have a traditional action-adventure based on an age-old legend with universal familiarity and a male lead, who’s proven himself by carrying several films, while in the other, is a female led action film, with a completely original story and pretensions towards high art. Add to that a lead who’s never carried a blockbuster, an R-rating and European provenance and Luc Besson’s film, Lucy seems risky.

While both films were successes, with Lucy earning a cool $44 million its opening weekend and Hercules, $29 million, the big story on their release was the industry’s surprise that the great hero, Hercules, was beaten by “a girl.” Headlines posed it as a physical fight: Lucy alternately beat-up, slayed, pummeled, over muscled, and overpowered Hercules, and that was something to gawk at.

Of course, Hercules couldn’t be defeated by a mere “girl.” She has to be a super-powered engine.

Way back in April, when the film’s first trailer was released, Lucy went viral. The story of an American party girl transformed by a drug that lets her access 100 percent of her brain, it looked like a crazy, brutal ride with Scarlett Johansson morphing into a merciless and unstoppable god-like killer; like Bradley Cooper’s well-received Limitless, but with a woman holding a gun. Even the mind-expanding drug at the centre of the story is gendered feminine, a synthetic form of CPH4, a hormone produced by pregnant women.

It all sounds rather wondrous. A female led-action film is always something to take notice of (they’re as rare as unicorns), especially when it’s successful. Sure, every time a film with a female lead dominates at the box office, feminist critics have to cheer it on a bit regardless of its quality, because of its potential as a game changer (though I’m not sure how many times we need a success before it will actually change the game), but Lucy has a lot going for it.

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.

It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

 

American party girl Lucy is manipulated by her boyfriend into becoming a drug mule
American party girl Lucy is manipulated by her boyfriend into becoming a drug mule

 

Lucy is set up like a rape revenge film, a controversial idea in of itself. Our heroine is manipulated into working as a drug mule by her new boyfriend, who forces her to deliver a briefcase by flirting with her and then handcuffing her to it. Next, she’s lifted off the ground and abducted from a hotel lobby by a group of mobsters who refuse to explain anything to her and promise to kill her and her family if she refuses to cooperate. After being knocked unconscious, she wakes up in a strange bedroom stripped to her underwear to find her body has been violated, except, instead of raping Lucy, her captors have cut her open and sewn a bag of drugs inside her body which she will have to deliver for them. Through all this, Lucy is helpless and relentlessly victimized; she has no idea how to save herself from these men who have claimed ownership of her body and her will.

Lucy wakes up in an unfamiliar room, in a scene reminiscent of a woman discovering she has been drugged and raped
Lucy wakes up in an unfamiliar room, in a scene reminiscent of a woman discovering she has been drugged and raped

 

Until one of her captors kicks her in the stomach, which causes the drugs to leak into her body, inadvertently unlocking her mind and eventually giving her superhuman abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, invulnerability to pain, mind control, and time travel as the area of her brain she is able to access rises. Along with this, comes a Greek god’s sense of morality, as she begins to see human beings as insignificant creatures that she can kill for simply being in her way.

And what is Lucy to do with her superpowers? Does she want to save herself from the effects of the drug, which promise to kill her within 24 hours? Does she want revenge or to stop others from  being victimized as she was?  No, she just wants all the CPH4 left so she can accumulate all human knowledge and build a supercomputer. Really, that’s the plot.

 

Lucy gains superhuman abilities and invulnerability
Lucy gains superhuman abilities and invulnerability

 

Though she does kill off the mobsters, it’s only incidental to her goal. In fact, she helps the police arrest the other drug mules, people who have been victimized just as she was, with no concern to the punishment they will face.

The problem with creating a god-like protagonist with no concern for humanity is that she has no concern for humanity.  Lucy has no passion or anger about what has happened to her and after a few early scenes, there’s no reason to sympathize or identify with her. Because she no longer has human concerns, the stakes are no longer personal. Because she’s become so powerful, there’s also no struggle for her, no question of whether or not she will succeed. Lucy is an unstoppable force and her enemies are nothing more than bugs on a windshield. A good action film should have character development as well as fight scenes and explosions, and Lucy is sorely lacking in that department.

 

As an action heroine, Lucy wields a gun and kills without hesitation
As an action heroine, Lucy wields a gun and kills without hesitation

 

Shortly after the drug leaks into her system, Lucy makes one final phone call to her parents, where she tearfully says goodbye and thanks them for raising her so well. This short scene is all we really get of Lucy’s past or of her humanity and once she hangs up the phone, she quickly loses any determination to stay alive or return to her old life. By the time she arrives at the apartment she shares with her friend, Caroline ( Analeigh Tipton), she is cold and impartial.

A film with an emotionless, inhuman god or robot figure only works when there is also a human character we are meant to connect and sympathize with–John and Sarah Connor to the unyielding Terminator. Here, Lucy tries to be both human and inhuman, giving us no real reason to care about her. Though she’s joined by a French police officer, Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked), playing the usual female role of grounding their superhuman partner, he is given no backstory and we are given no indication that we are meant to switch to identifying with him. His purpose in the story is unclear as, though she kisses him in one scene, saying she needs him to keep her connected to humanity, but we never see this actually happen and the kiss is very dry and perfunctory, indicating he is not meant to be a romantic interest.

 

Morgan Freeman explains Lucy’s actions as she becomes less and less human
Morgan Freeman explains Lucy’s actions as she becomes less and less human

 

Morgan Freeman is also along for the ride as a scientist whose lectures on the human brain are paired with scenes of Lucy’s transformation as if she is his object lesson. Though Lucy apparently has surpassed his knowledge by the time she speaks to him and knows enough to criticize his theories, he is still posed as an expert who she needs to help her on her quest. By the last segment of the film, Lucy has lost so much humanity that she becomes nothing more than a beautiful object, a Marilyn Monroe mannequin, moved around and explained by men. As she sits silently in a chair absorbing CPH4 and watching spectacular effects only she can see, Morgan Freeman narrates what is happening to her. While her body transforms, she becomes less human, less verbal and therefore less of a character. By the film’s end, her physical form and anything that was specifically the human woman named Lucy cease to exist. Instead, she becomes a force of knowledge that exists “everywhere” and a supercomputer that the male characters can use, a literal object that will somehow save them, though what she hopes they will do with it is never explained.

In addition, there’s definitely some racism at work in the film, which is set in Asia and filled with Asian villains who violate a “‘pure white woman.” There is no real reason the crime story has to to take place in Taiwan aside from vague cultural perceptions that Asia is full of drugs and crime. In one scene, Lucy kills three men after they tell her they don’t speak English, suggesting that they deserved to die for not speaking her language, though she’s the one in a foreign country.

 

Set in Taiwan, the film shows Asian men preying on a white woman
Set in Taiwan, the film shows Asian men preying on a white woman

 

The filmmakers appeared to take for granted that they would be viewed as progressive for using a female lead, but instead, merely transform the standard white savior from male to female without paying attention to the problematic idea of the white savior itself. Viewers who praise the film as feminist ignore the idea the idea that feminism does not only include white women.

Like any successful female led film, Lucy should also be looked at for its potential to change the media landscape. Scarlett Johansson definitely gives it her all and shows her potential as an action star, capable of helming a film even without her fellow Avengers. Perhaps Lucy’s success will lead to a  solo film for  her popular  Black Widow character or to films for some of our other favorite superheroines.

On its own, Lucy is a cheesy and entertaining ride if you don’t think too much about it. It casts a woman in a superhuman role that women rarely get to play and never plays it as a surprise or irony that the person tasked with advancing the human race is female. That much is admirable.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Sex, Violence, and Girls in Pink Dresses: Thoughts on Prom Horror Flicks

Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence, and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers.

Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.

We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers. Prom is also held up as a sort of pre-wedding, “the night” where a couple must have special sex in a fancy hotel room with roses on the bed and special lingerie, and the night when “good girls” decide to lose their virginity. It’s as close as we have to a coming of age ceremony, like a young woman’s first menstruation or first sexual encounter, prom night is a milestone where she can be said to change from girl to woman. In the slasher Prom Night, it’s no coincidence that the high-schoolers face the killer’s vengeance on this particular night, when they enter adulthood and are finally old enough to face the consequences of their actions.

 

Before the pig blood is dropped on her, Carrie feels her dreams have come true
Before the pig blood is dropped on her, Carrie feels her dreams have come true.

 

In the three Carrie films, Carrie White’s first period comes just ahead of her senior prom, and along with it, the full bloom of her telekinetic powers. Her prom also awakens her repressed sexuality, as Carrie admires her body in her prom dress, displaying the tops of her breasts, which her mother has taught her are shameful “dirty pillows” she must always cover, for the first time. In the 2013 remake, Carrie’s delight in her power is also tied to her sexuality as she makes slightly orgasmic facial expressions when using them.

Part of the extreme resentment, Chris, Carrie’s chief tormenter, shows toward her, can be seen as stemming from jealousy of Carrie’s excitement about prom and with it, sex. For Carrie, these things come to mean rebellion and at least initially, in preparing for prom, are empowering for her. Meanwhile, Chris, in the original 1976 film at least, appears to treat sex as a chore. What appears to turn her on, is her hatred of Carrie; she licks her lips before releasing the bucket of blood and talks about Carrie while fooling around with her boyfriend.

Besides the whole telekinetic powers thing, the part of Carrie that has always seemed unrealistic to me is that Carrie, a girl who has been tormented and abused by her classmates her whole life, even goes to prom. It’s always been slightly unbelievable that she would accept Tommy’s invitation without insisting it had to be the set up for a trick. But maybe she believes in what pop culture has always told us about prom night, that it has transformational powers, a strange magic that could make one the most popular boys in school ask out an outcast and end up really liking her upon getting to know her, that all her classmates could see the change in her and honestly vote her prom queen. After all, visually she does transform. She’s beautiful in her new dress, everyone is shown admiring her and as she gains control over her powers, she has become much more confident. With the final show of her telekinetic revenge from the stage, abused Carrie transforms into something monstrous, but understandable. On prom night, she gains her autonomy and reveals and revels in her adulthood.

 

Lola and Brent pose for twisted prom photos
Lola and Brent pose for twisted prom photos.

 

Likewise, in The Loved Ones, a 2009 Australian film, a shy, quiet outcast (Robin McLeavy) reveals her true self on prom night. In the beginning of the film, she asks her crush, Brent (Xavier Samuel), to the prom, and is rejected. At school, she appears awkward and weird, and is never really an option for Brent, who has a conventionally attractive, sexually confident girlfriend. Horror arrives when Brent is kidnapped by Lola and her father, and learns that they have been regularly kidnapping teenage boys in search of “the one” for her. Lola’s father has set up a prom night for her in their own house, including a spinning disco ball, showers of glitter, and her favorite song on the stereo, and within it, she is powerful and frightening, a monstrous creature who tortures Brent and believes that on prom night, this may make him love her.

Horror films can also play on our culture’s fear of sex as an act that can change a good girl into a bad girl, by showing a virgin literally turn into a insatiable succubus after her first time. Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou follows Vicki (Wendy Lyon), a virginal sweetheart nominated from Prom Queen at her high school, who becomes possessed by the spirit of dead 1957 Prom Queen, Mary Lou (Lisa Schrage). Like Carrie, Vicki’s sexuality is repressed by her religious mother, who refuses to buy her a new dress for prom, as she finds them inappropriately sexual.

 

‘Bad girl’ Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957
“Bad girl” Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957

 

Though it’s a horror film and she goes on a murderous rampage, we are meant to understand Mary Lou is a “bad girl” when she is shown confessing her sexual exploits to a priest and refusing to repent for them. Instead, she leaves her phone number in the confessional, and writes, “For a good time, call Mary Lou.”

Using Vicki’s body, she lures students to her death by promising sex and in gratuitous one scene, chases a rival through the locker room, completely nude and attempts to seduce her. All of Mary Lou’s villainy is tinged by her equally villainous sexuality, including one scene where she, within Vicki’s body, gives Vicki’s father a passionate kiss.

 

Vicki is an innocent young girl who Mary Lou uses to reap her revenge
Vicki is an innocent young girl who Mary Lou uses to reap her revenge

 

The rituals of prom night–getting dressing and applying makeup in front of the mirror, posing for pictures, crowning of the prom queen, and the first slow dance–are familiar enough as cultural markers that horror movies can illicit a strong response by perverting them. Prom horror typically lulls viewers into complacency before everything turns dark, by playing some of these traditional markers straight and suggesting the film is merely a happy story of prom night as wish fulfillment. Lola and Brent’s story is intercut with scenes of the more realistic, wish-fulfillment prom night experienced by his best friend. Similarly, the 2008 remake of Prom Night led up to the big night with scenes of the young characters excitedly getting their hair done, trying on their dresses and sticking their heads out of the limo’s sunroof, all set to bright poppy music. In The Loved Ones, Lola and her father force their captives though a series of twisted prom night rituals, where they eat dinner together, dance under the disco ball, pose from pictures, and are crowned prom king and queen, only through all this, Brent’s feet are nailed to the floor and the prom photos display him more like a trophy than a date, with Lola’s initials carved across his chest. Early on, Lola’s moment of transformation is perverted, as while she changes into her perfect prom dress, she tells her father to stay and he watches, lustful from the door.

 

Otis forces Riley to be his prom date
Otis forces Riley to be his prom date

 

2008’s Otis is a similar type of captive prom date film. In it, a pedophilic serial killer (Bostin Christopher) kidnaps a teenage girl, Riley (Ashley Johnson) and forces her to play the role of the girl who rejected him in high school and help him reenact the prom he dreamed of. Through the film, he drags her though a prom tableau set up in his basement: a girly bedroom where he calls to ask her out, a car where he forces her to pleasure him and finally a dance floor where he holds the actual prom. Otis is influenced by an idea of what a classic, even cookie cutter prom should be. In his prom-fantasy, he dates a blonde cheerleader, drives a classic car and is even named prom king.

It’s interesting that pink dresses are so common in these films. Carrie’s homemade prom dress is pale pink, all the better to show off the pig blood stains. Mary Lou’s dress in the 50s is pink, as is the cookie cutter dress Otis buys for Riley. In The Loved Ones, pink is Lola’s power color and her room is full of it. Both the paper crown and the prom dress her father buys her are bright, stinging pink, that nearly glows. Pink is a traditionally girly color, one that signifies childhood and innocence, and it’s no coincidence that the chief wish fulfillment prom film is called Pretty in Pink.

 

Lola’s prom dress allows her to transform
Lola’s prom dress allows her to transform

 

As a signifier of adulthood, prom night also suggests a dismissal of childish things, shortly after, there will be graduation, maybe college, and the graduating class will move out of their childhood rooms. In a disturbing scene in Hello Mary Lou, a possessed Vicki, all dolled up for prom, sits atop the pastel colored rocking horse in her bedroom, as it comes alive, with a twisted, demonic face, red eyes and an outstretched tongue. Likewise, Lola perverts her dolls and stuffed animals by setting them in sexual positions, showing the uncomfortable melding of childhood and adulthood in her mind.

 

On prom night, a possessed Vicki plays with her childhood rocking horse
On prom night, a possessed Vicki plays with her childhood rocking horse

 

That these girls chose pink dress also suggests their purity is slightly tarnished or that their dresses are white that has been diluted by blood. Moreover, it suggests a junior or training wedding.

Like a wedding, prom night is characterized by patriarchal rituals that make a father responsible for his daughter’s sexuality. In pop culture, fathers joke about having to lock up their daughter on prom night and worry about them getting pregnant or secretly giving birth in the bathroom. It’s the first time they are asked to see their daughters as sexual beings and trust them to be grown-ups going out into the world.

In typical prom rituals, a father meets his daughter’s date when he comes to pick her up and in shaking his hand, symbolically hands her over to him. Otis goes as far as to call Riley’s father, once he already has her held hostage, to ask for his permission to take her out. In The Loved Ones, Lola’s incestuous desire for her father helps paint her as monstrous. As they dance together, she tells him she can’t be satisfied with any of the teenage boys they have kidnapped because he is the only one for her.

Moreover, though the characters in these prom horror stories arrive with a date, they tend to leave alone, as if abandoned after sex, for a “walk of shame”  the morning after. In Otis, Riley escapes, still in her prom dress, while The Loved Ones ends with a morning after chase sequence through the outback between Lola and Brent and his girlfriend. In this last fight, Lola appears to lose both her strength and confidence, as if depleted by her prom night. Likewise, after leaving the school gym, Carrie enacts more brutal wrath on her long walk home. In all versions, she walks alone through the town, as if possessed, until she arrives home for her final confrontation with her mother, her final symbolic shift into adulthood.

 

Carrie transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant
Carrie transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant

 

A culture’s horror stories have always reflected what they finds terrifying, by exaggerating it and moving it into allegorical contexts. To some extent, this has always included female sexuality, from the fear of liberated women in Dracula to the virgin/whore dichotomy of the slasher film, and probably always will. Prom continues to resonate as, displayed by last year’s Carrie remake. Although the film has its problems, the basic storyline continues to be as relevant today as it was in the 70s. Prom Horror will likely continue to crop up every few years, shaded by whatever trend in their teenagers’ lives are frightening adults at the time, like the use of cyber bullying in Carrie.

 

See also at Bitch Flicks: Prom and Female Sexual Desire in Pretty in Pink and The Loved Ones

_______________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

When Can You Laugh at Suicide?: ‘A Long Way Down’

Suicide is no laughing matter, but we try. If it’s not a heavy drama or inspirational story telling you to stop and watch the sunset, stop and smell the roses, and the like, making a film about suicide requires a light touch and buckets of understanding and sensitivity. As a comedy plot, it only seems to work when sensitivity is disposed of completely. Suicide has been a successful plot for dark comedies, most notably ‘Heathers’ and ‘Harold and Maude’, which are full of irony, satire, insight and meditation. But ‘A Long Way Down’, a British film based on the bestselling novel by Nick Hornby, is not a dark comedy

Poster for A Long Way Down
Poster for A Long Way Down

 

Suicide is no laughing matter, but we try.

If it’s not a heavy drama or inspirational story telling you to stop and watch the sunset, stop and smell the roses and the like, making a film about suicide requires a light touch and buckets of understanding and sensitivity.

As a comedy plot, it only seems to work when sensitivity is disposed of completely. Suicide has been a successful plot for dark comedies, most notably Heathers and Harold and Maude, which are full of irony, satire, insight and meditation.

But A Long Way Down, a British film based on the bestselling novel by Nick Hornby, author of About a Boy and High Fidelity, is not a dark comedy (through its Wikipedia page suggests otherwise). Instead, it’s a light comedy that wears its life-changing intentions on its sleeve and comes across too obvious to be genuine.

 

The story begins when four very different people meet on a roof, intending to commit suicide
The story begins when four very different people meet on a roof, intending to commit suicide

 

The film follows four people of varying ages who meet when they all try to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve. The first we meet is Martin Sharp (Pierce Brosnan), a disgraced talk show host jailed for a liaison with a 15-year-old girl (ridiculously he claims she looked 25). As his relationships with his wife and child were ruined by the scandal and he has becomes widely hated and unemployable, he plans to throw himself off a building. At the top, he meets Jess (Imogen Poots), Maureen (Toni Collette), and JJ (Aaron Paul), who had the same idea.

Politician’s daughter and club kid Jess impulsively decides to jump after being dumped by Chaz, a character so unnecessary that after one early scene, he is never mentioned again. Maureen is an anxious, religious woman existing in a world she considers crass (as exemplified by Jess), who refuses to engage with pop culture or create a life for herself outside of caring for her son. Her grown son, Matty, has severe cerebral palsy and requires constant care. Rounding out the group, JJ is a pizza delivery boy and washed-up musician who tells the group he has brain cancer so they’ll take him seriously.

Decisions in the film seem less guided by character or logic than by a map of where the plot should go to hit from point A to B. In a chain of events that would never happen in real life, the group bizarrely form a makeshift family and convince each other to stay alive until Valentine’s Day. In quick, fragmented episodes, they become the target of a media frenzy, go on a beach holiday together to escape and return to London, where hardly anything happens until the film ends and everyone’s fine. In the midst, there’s an intriguing story suggested, as the foursome inspires others to reconsider their plans for suicide by lying to the press and saying they were stopped by an angel, but the thread is quickly dropped and never returned to.

Director Pascal Chaumeil has produced a film that’s pretty to look at, and tries to be aspirational and life-changing, but ends up more being more offensive than anything else. It’s particularly irritating when a film with such sloppy storytelling and such a gross inability to create characters that feel like flesh and blood (instead of quip generators) is used in such a manipulative manner to try force an epiphany in its viewers. It’s possible A Long Way Down has good intentions; it certainly has a positive message, but it doesn’t feel like the filmmakers really put their hearts into it. The film has a lot of good points, for the most part–it’s funny and enjoyable, it hosts several capable performances, and is glossy and fluffy enough to feel like a quality picture. But it’s completely tone deaf.

 

The group forget their problems by goofing off together
The group forget their problems by goofing off together

 

The story aimlessly moves between characters, whiplashing from corny moments of the group splashing around in the ocean together to close-ups of the characters looking off sadly into the distance with little coherence. By the end, it’s suggested that suicidal depression can be completely overcome by a tropical vacation, goofing off and forming a wacky inter-generational friendships. Harold and Maude seems to be successful version of what the film is aiming for: an unlikely connection between two people that a gives a young person a new lease on life.

The problem with portraying a complex issue like depression in a film is that it makes it difficult to create characters that feel universally “likable,” an oft-cited necessity for a successful film. A viewer with no sympathy or personal experience is liable to find characters with clear mental health problems like Jess and JJ irritating and self-indulgent for complaining about their lack of what others might consider real problems. The film tries to counter this possibility with first person narrative, a tactic that allows the viewer a look into the characters’ heads; however, these narrations provide little else besides an opportunity to include some witty, classically Hornby lines cherry-picked from his book.

In addition, the film refuses to take Jess’s depression seriously. She clearly has some mental health issues, as she wishes she were invisible, appears slightly sociopathic and unable to relate to other people and filter out inappropriate speech, and even stalks a boyfriend to the point where he fears for his life. Add to this her severe alienation from her parents and her missing sister, the golden child, and she comes off as the most developed, relatable character. Still, her problems are played down and attributed to her merely being a dramatic teenager. It’s the same tendency we’ve seem in other media, to regard any problems felt by a privileged young woman as “first world” or “rich white girl problems.” Instead of showing us that Jess does have mental health problems despite her privileged background, she’s portrayed as a poor little rich girl who makes problems for herself.

 

Jess stalks the others around the city to make sure they’re following the pact
Jess stalks the others around the city to make sure they’re following the pact

 

There is also a desire between the characters to give one specific reason for their suicidal intentions and for the most part it’s very easy for them to do. Martin has his blighted reputation, Maureen has the burden of caring for Matty, and Jess, because Chaz doesn’t love her. The lone exception is JJ and much his arc through the film centers around the lie he tells the others to get them to take him seriously (that he has cancer) and the accompanying depression of not having a reason for being depressed. In the last act, the other characters finally take him seriously when he goes back to the tower roof to commit suicide but any meaningful character development or recovery is overshadowed in favor of an ill-thought-out romantic relationship with Jess. The relationship comes out of nowhere towards the film’s end (they do not get together in the book), suggesting the filmmakers couldn’t imagine a platonic relationship between young attractive male and female characters, even when they appear to emotionally vulnerable for a serious relationship.

However, real-life people are more complex than that and there are often many reasons why someone might consider suicide, as well as biological and social factors, such as what support system they have in place. It is rare that it can be so easily reduced to a sentence. Rather than portray the characters as learning they are being reductive, even with JJ’s second suicide attempt, the film itself produces characters who can be easily reduced to types (Martin is slimy, Jess is manic, Maureen is restrained and JJ is a would-be rocker) and scarcely gives us any reason to see them in three dimensions. The characters’ back stories are so glossed over and devoid of context, that it’s unclear what is motivating them most of the time. For example, there is no explanation of why Martin’s children do not factor into his decision to commit suicide or why Maureen does not have the support of her family, any friends or of Matty’s father.

By the ending, on New Year’s Eve of the next year, everyone seems fixed. They still talk, but less like a support group helping each other stay afloat than four people that can barely remember why they felt so hopeless a year ago. Like I said, maybe that message has moved some viewers. It’s true that Depression is like that. You find yourself so desperate you can’t imagine living a second longer and then one day, much later, you look back and feel like a different person.

But A Long Way Down promises an unequivocally happy movie ending. These people are capital F- fixed, they’ve been in the trenches together, but they’ll never be up on the ledge again. There’s no reason to keep worrying about them or an acknowledgement of the reality that depression is a mental illness that can recur again and again. Though Jess and JJ mention being in therapy, which suggests their mental upkeep is a constant process, it doesn’t seem as important to them as the happily ever after of their romance.

 

At the last minute an obligatory romance develops between Jess and JJ
At the last minute, an obligatory romance develops between Jess and JJ

 

Likewise, Martin and Maureen’s stories are played as if they’re cured. Sadly for character development, the resolutions for both their stories take place off-screen and are never detailed. Though Martin’s reputation and job prospects are forever destroyed and people call him a pervert in the street, all is well when he gives up worrying about everything else to spend time with his kids.

Through grotesquely underdeveloped, Maureen appears to be a fascinating character, with a life we rarely see onscreen. She is raising a special needs son alone, worried about his future and burdened by the responsibility, all of which make her a complex character with an intriguing story of her own stuffed into a meandering flick where she is allowed little onscreen development.

From what we see, her life magically sorts itself out though Maureen’s routine barely changes. She saves Matty from a possibly fatal heart attack and realizes her son needs her, but of course, the burden of being his sole carer was the main reason she felt suicidal to begin with. Other than that, all she needed to fix her life was to join a quiz team and get a boyfriend.

In my opinion, A Long Way Down could have been a satisfying film. Framing it as a serious and subtly meaningful film, with black comedy to lighten the mood, could have saved it.

The core premise, of a bunch of strangers coming together, and helping each other have a better future is fairly classic and has proven itself to be a creatively fruitful jumping off point in the past. But it’s not handled capably here.

 

Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ form a non-suicide pact: stay alive until Valentine’s Day
Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ form a non-suicide pact: stay alive until Valentine’s Day

 

Still, I could be reading the whole thing wrong. Maybe approaching suicide with a feather-light touch has made the story more accessible and even cheered some honestly depressed real-life people. It’s possible to see how it could be moving or even inspiring that everyone gets a happy ending. But I’m a cynical person, I like my comedies dark, so A Long Way Down isn’t for me. But maybe it can help you.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.