Heather Brown – Bitch Flicks

Love and BDSM Meet in ‘The Duke of Burgundy’

In a radically empathic way, we feel the emotional pain both women face when Evelyn’s desire to be dominated is greater than Cynthia’s will to dominate. This deftly expressed when we see identical scenes enacted from each woman’s perspective. Take the golden shower scene: the door closes, we hear water running, and then the sound of Evelyn choking. Since we’ve just been introduced to them, its Evelyn who wins our sympathies and Cynthia that seems aggressive in punishment.

If one were to judge the film based on its trailer alone, it would be tempting to assume The Duke of Burgundy could be categorized as a lesbian 50 Shades of Blah Blah Blah, only with lots of butterflies and gorgeous cinematography. (Full disclosure: this reviewer has not seen the latter but puts her total trust in J. Jack Halberstam’s takedown.) More impressive than the cinematography, though, is how the film explores the complex relationship between love and power in a lesbian couple’s BDSM role-play.

Cynthia is an entomologist who lives in a sprawling, ivy-covered home. She writes books, attends lectures on her subject, and employs a woman named Evelyn as her maid. Cynthia is rarely satisfied with how Evelyn completes her chores, and disciplines her charge with humiliating labor, like hand-washing her undergarments and polishing her boots. When Evelyn inevitably fails to satisfy, Cynthia subjects her to physical punishment, much of which happens with Evelyn lying prone. Cynthia sits on her head, ties her hands, and urinates in her mouth.

It soon becomes clear that the humiliation we see is carefully orchestrated by Evelyn. The couple has a deep intimacy that is co-created through Cynthia’s total devotion to pleasing her partner’s voracious desire to be dominated. Although Evelyn is the sub, she is the architect of their fantasy play. Through non-linear storytelling, the perspective shifts from Evelyn to Cynthia. For example, when we first see Evelyn arrive for work as maid, Cynthia presents as a formidable, disapproving master who exacts total control in words and actions. Soon, however, the scene is replayed from Cynthia’s point of view and we see her reading a set of instructions for how to behave when Evelyn arrives. Cynthia diligently fashions her wig just so, and her eyes betray a measure of anxiety. She is an actress taking care to craft her appearance just before walking onstage. Their performance is about to begin.

Through flashbacks and fantasy sequences, the depth of Cynthia and Evelyn’s relationship is revealed. We learn they are both entomologists who bring the same degree of precision to their role-play as they do to their research. Evelyn is unrelenting in her commitment to creating opportunities for Cynthia to dominate her, which both emotionally and physically wears on her partner. And it is these moments when the staging of their role-play makes for surprising instances of comedy and tenderness. An especially titillating scene wherein Cynthia whispers commands in her lover’s ear as Evelyn masturbates turns humorous when, post-orgasm, she tells Cynthia to have more “conviction” in her voice next time. Though Evelyn often delivers her requests with a sweet but deliberate earnestness, these pieces of constructive criticism have the cumulative effect of wearying her lover. When Cynthia’s ambivalence tips toward frustration, we see how much negotiation is required by both partners to maintain the artifice of their role-play.

In a radically empathic way, we feel the emotional pain both women face when Evelyn’s desire to be dominated is greater than Cynthia’s will to dominate. This is deftly expressed when we see identical scenes enacted from each woman’s perspective. Take the golden shower scene: the door closes, we hear water running, and then the sound of Evelyn choking. Since we’ve just been introduced to them, its Evelyn who wins our sympathies and Cynthia that seems aggressive in punishment. Later, when Cynthia is carefully reviewing her index cards of instructions, we see her guzzling glass after glass of water—and now we know what’s coming. When the door closes again to replay the scene, all is quiet. And then Evelyn suggests the Cynthia turn on the tap. It’s not every day that we see a film that elicits two opposing and equally felt reactions: “Don’t pee in her mouth!” and “Why can’t she just pee in her mouth?” Such is the contradictory nature of desire.

A Labor of Love and the Internet: ‘Cyber-Seniors’

I was born in 1980, which means I’m old enough to remember not knowing how to use the internet. I also remember being taught to use it. In 2015 I can’t imagine not having this instrument in my life, but the documentary Cyber-Seniors reminded me that there is a very large swath of the population that passed many more years without the presence of email or instant messenger than I did. The film tells the story of a mentoring program called Cyber-Seniors, founded in 2009 by teenage sisters Macaulee and Kascha Cassaday. Macaulee and Kascha were moved to set up this program because they experienced firsthand the benefits of how Facebook and Skype enabled them to remain connected to their grandparents. Enlisting the help of friends, the sisters started to regularly visit assisted living residences to provide basic computer and internet skills to elderly adults. The people they work with are in their late seventies to early nineties, and express varying degrees of interest, delight, and frustration with their lessons. Shura, 88, is endlessly amused by every new thing she learns about what’s possible on the internet—especially on YouTube. In fact, she becomes quite enamored of cooking videos and decides to make one of her own. The results are more than charming.

There’s an unapologetic sweetness to this film, in part because it is directed by Macaulee and Kascha’s sister, Saffron and their mother, Brenda Rusnak. However, to my great relief, it does well to avoid too much sentiment. After all, the same Internet that has given us Skyping with grandma has also given us an endless pit of ugliness. There are a few moments of gravitas in the film that touch on the pain of loss, aging, and illness. When Ellard, 89, is given the opportunity to connect with his daughter, we learn that they are estranged, and he hasn’t seen her for over five years. And in a sad, unexpected turn, we also see Macaulee fall sick from cancer. At the expense of spoiling the film, though, I hasten to add that the ending is decidedly hopeful.

Perhaps the most moving aspect of the film is the nonchalance of the intergenerational dynamics. We see the teenage mentors move from tentative to completely comfortable—and almost pleasantly bored—by their interactions with these adults, who they would otherwise have no reason to know outside Cyber-Seniors. It’s easy to be cynical about the way social media facilitates a bottomless narcissism, as every YouTube video seems to scream “look at me!” Cyber-Seniors is an antidote to that feeling, and does well to emphasize the upside of the internet by showing a population that too often goes unseen get a chance to enjoy recognition.

The Feminisms of ‘Born in Flames’

What is the role of difference in feminism? When in doubt, ask Audre Lorde. In 1980, she delivered a lecture entitled “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (later published in ‘Sister Outsider’) in which she states, “There is a pretense to homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct ‘Born in Flames,’ a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

What is the role of difference in feminism? When in doubt, ask Audre Lorde. In 1980, she delivered a lecture entitled “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (later published in Sister Outsider) in which she states, “There is a pretense to homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct Born in Flames, a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

The film takes place 10 years after a social revolution in the United States (!). However, despite the political structure of a socialist democracy, social and economic justice for the historically marginalized is still a long way off. Filmed in cinema verité style with non-professional actors and against the backdrop of Reagan-era New York City, the post-revolution future looks appropriately gritty, unflinching, and chaotic—much like the film’s narrative. So, too, are the voices of feminist activists that structure the film. First, we meet Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) an African American woman who, along with Hilary Hurst (Hilary Hurst), a white women, leads the Women’s Army. Both are disenfranchised by the government’s “work-fair” program, and we see them work to mobilize their respective communities across racial lines. And most importantly, we see them disagree about how to do it. Adelaide, influenced by her mentor Zella (played by the late feminist activist Florynce Kennedy), weighs the necessity of the Women’s Army to take up arms against the state, which has only ever perpetuated militarized violence toward women, lesbians, communities of color, and the poor in general. Zella tells Adelaide, “all oppressed people have a right to violence.”

4066608,MEUK8_yO5xQdKLkPLgMItWVLCYaIOhhTXdnuy6V36UWbsUfi12hhhizWOkB9UmVzqHPoGdOPBspxn7qZ1hbjow== — Jean Satterfield as Adelaide Norris, Women’s Army

In addition to seeing women converse with and debate one another, we also see them speaking from dedicated feminist platforms on pirate radio. Isabel (Adele Bertei), the DJ of Radio Ragazza, is an outspoken critic of the Women’s Army. She and her community represent the white, anarchist-punk perspective that promotes creative resistance through art. Then there’s Honey (Honey) of Phoenix Radio, a DJ who Adelaide seeks as an ally by extension of overlap of their membership in Black communities. Yet another voice is the Socialist Youth Review, a liberal magazine whose reporters (white women, including a young Kathryn Bigelow) occasionally weigh in to critique the Women’s Army for its agenda and question the need for it to exist at all, given the social gains achieved by the revolution. And finally, a distinctly anti-feminist perspective that provides a counter-narrative to the action unfolding is the voiceover of FBI agents, who aim to take down the Women’s Army, starting with Adelaide Norris. We hear them remark, “We don’t know who to find out who is charge” and “it’s not clear how they function.” These statements reveal just how confounding it is to the very centralized government that a social movement could share authority amongst its members.

borninflames1 — Adele Bertei as Isabel of Radio Regazza

One of the ways that the Women’s Army shares this authority is shared is through collective anti-street harassment activism and anti-rape squads. In a harrowing but triumphant scene, a woman is being assaulted by two women on her way to the subway, and out of nowhere appears a fleet of women on bicycles, blowing whistles and circling the men. The men leave the scene and the Women’s Army come to the aid of the attack victim. What is particularly important about this scene is not just how little things have changed when it comes to the endurance of street harassment and violence against women, but that the Women’s Army creates its own policing solutions to these problems. Instead of acting out carceral feminism, which relies on law enforcement and state violence to combat violence against women, the feminisms of Born in Flames create justice rather than restore “order.”

Though much is made of the differences between the activist groups, one thread runs through the film: the shared experience of work. There are several montages—set to the soundtrack of Red Krayola’s “Born in Flames,” which will get lodged in your brain for weeks—in which close-up shots of hands and all kinds of bodies are engaged in all kinds of labor. From bagging groceries, to child care, to sex work, each act is equated as valuable in its own right. One of the acts of resistance occurs after Adelaide, like many other women who are lower in the social caste, is laid off from her construction job and organizes a demonstration to fight for jobs that have the potential for growth.

The film’s rising action occurs when Adelaide is detained by the FBI on suspicion of arms trafficking—a fabrication intended to stamp out her and the Women’s Army. Without spoiling the film, let’s just say that the different feminist subgroups are called to combine their efforts and create Phoenix Regazza Radio to stand in solidarity as they enact a final act of terrorism. While this particular act is a bit chilling to watch post-9/11, it powerfully symbolizes the danger that will befall society should the marginalization of women and the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy persist.

Working My Way Through Feminist Film History: Art and Intimacy in ‘I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing’

This post is inspired by Alison Nastasi’s “50 Essential Feminist Films,” an excellent survey of films that is a kind of resource guide for those of us interested in exploring feminist film history. Though not exhaustive, Nastasi’s list is an exciting place to extend the conversation about the ways that feminist questions and concerns have been depicted in films in and outside of Hollywood in the past several decades. What’s more, this list is also a site for discovering films I didn’t even know to look for.

The Canadian director Patrica Rozema directed this quietly charming film, which stars Sheila McCarthy. McCarthy plays Polly, whose videotaped confession frames the story and immediately establishes our curiosity. What crime could this anxious and seemingly guileless woman have committed? Polly is in her early 30s and enjoys a solitary life filled with frequent bike rides to various spots around Toronto, which she eagerly absorbs in her photography. She develops the pictures in her darkroom, and we see her still images enlarged by her imagination into elaborate fantasies wherein she can fly like a bird, engage in erudite conversation about psychoanalysis, and conduct magnificent symphonies. Although there is something slightly melancholy about her, Polly appears content with the simplicity of her life.

As she tells the video camera, “It all started” when she begins working as the “Girl Friday” for a curator, Gabrielle. Polly rapturously describes how taken she is with Gabrielle, who Polly exclusively refers to as “the curator.” Gabrielle is sophisticated, confident, and serious. Most of all, she is generous toward Polly, who falls under a spell of childlike adoration. Remarkably, their dynamic is one of mutual respect, even despite their differences. Gabrielle appreciates Polly, and offers her a permanent position. However, Polly is as innocent and naïve as Gabrielle is weary and cautious, and this contrast intensifies when Mary enters the scene. An artist and former lover of Gabrielle’s, Mary is young enough to make Gabrielle feel too old to be with her, and we soon learn that the curator has an inner life that is fraught with insecurity about both aging and art.

On the latter, Polly feels a kinship with Gabrielle, who drunkenly confides to Polly that despite her accomplishments and status, she craves not to “die with her body.” Gabrielle tells Polly that she desires the immortality of creating a beautiful painting that will endure after she is gone. Polly’s openness and curiosity is a marked contrast to Gabrielle’s self-centeredness, but the intimacy of this scene makes it hard not to sympathize with both characters. When Gabrielle expresses shame around have her paintings rejected for acceptance in a university art course, Polly lovingly asks if Gabrielle will show her a painting. Gabrielle is flattered by her request, and opens the door to a room with a shining canvas that Polly finds enchanting. Even though Gabrielle and Mary are lovers, it is with Polly that Gabrielle can express her deep yearning to be known as an artist.

At the risk of spoiling this film any further, I’ll just say that what follows is an act that Polly commits with the most heartfelt of intentions but leads to a series of betrayals compelling her to document her account on video in the hopes of sharing the truth. Though not fundamental to enjoying nor understanding the film, it is interesting to revisit the poem from which the title of Rozema’s film is lifted: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Just like T.S. Eliot’s narrator, Polly dares to “disturb the universe.” In so doing, she illustrates the sacrifice inherent in sharing one’s art.

A Feminist Way to Search for Films

Like many film lovers, I have found my life much enhanced by the many video streaming opportunities that have emerged in the last two decades. There’s a lot to relish in the convenience of being a touch screen away from almost anything I’d want to watch. But here’s one thing I do miss: context. While Netflix categorizes movies according to a variety of genres that have led me to plenty of interesting films based on my tastes, what I don’t get from this browsing experience is a sense of how the films I watch are situated in relation to other films. Searching for movies in independent video stores and the audiovisual section of university libraries always took me into unexpected places (like Town Bloody Hall, just to name one gem I found in the stacks), and I often felt like I was being educated as well as entertained. And this is why I was so happy to find Fandor. This a film subscription site created by and for cinephiles who are interested in promoting discovery and curiosity. One of the ways they do this is to integrate the Bechdel test as a search category. Users of Fandor are encouraged to take the Bechdel test every time they watch a film and flag it as having passed the test; it then gets added to that category.

I highly recommend Jerome Fandor’s refreshing explanation of the connection between independent film and the Bechdel test, and I am truly excited to watch how Fandor will continue to expand its offerings and expand what it means to discover films.

History We Need: ‘Chisholm ’72’

Directed by Shola Lynch, the 2004 documentary ‘Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed’ tells the story of Chisholm’s campaign for her party’s nomination, and without even trying to, the film offers a necessary antidote to popular culture representation of the dominant white male supremacist lens of history-making that is reified when it goes unchallenged.

If you’ve been following Mad Men this season then you know that the year is 1969, and Nixon has just taken office. Although the show is centered on white upper-middle class men and women, we are finally seeing a wee bit of narrative texture in the two minority women characters employed at the Madison Avenue advertising firm that is the show’s locus. But this is not a takedown of Mad Men, a show whose characters, writing, and style I find compelling even though I support the critiques offered by the likes of W. Kamau Bell and Daniel Mendelsohn. I bring up this series because, unless the writers this season will reveal otherwise, the New York City of 1969 on this show is not likely to highlight a major historical moment of this time and place: in that year and in that city Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Three years later, she would launch the first major bid by a woman for candidacy for the Democratic Party for the President of the United States. While there had been other candidates for third and fourth parties as far back as 1872 (Victoria Woodhull, to be precise), Chisholm’s campaign was serious in its determination to represent the United States and all its citizens in no uncertain terms. Directed by Shola Lynch, the 2004 documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed tells the story of Chisholm’s campaign for her party’s nomination, and without even trying to, the film offers a necessary antidote to popular culture representation of the dominant white male supremacist lens of history-making that is reified when it goes unchallenged.

Lynch’s film follows a familiar style of documentary that viewers have come to expect from the POV series. There are numerous interviews with politicians, activists, and intellectuals who worked alongside Chisholm on her campaign or are called upon to reflect on why they did not support her nomination even while they supported her as a politician. The accounts of author/activist Amiri Baraka and former Congressmen Reverend Walter Fauntroy and Ronald Dellums are especially fascinating in that they reveal the complex interplay of concerns over standing behind a candidate they believed in vs. one who they thought could realistically defeat Nixon. Chisholm understood these concerns, but nonetheless offered a direct challenge to the conventional wisdom of electoral politics in her campaign announcement speech:

“I have faith in the American people. I believe that we are smart enough to correct our mistakes. I believe that we are intelligent enough to recognize the talent, energy, and dedication, which all American including women and minorities have to offer. I know from my travels to the cities and small towns of America that we have a vast potential, which can and must be put to constructive use in getting this great nation together.[…] I stand before you today, to repudiate the ridiculous notion that the American people will not vote for qualified candidates, simply because he is not right or because she is not a male. I do not believe that in 1972, the great majority of Americans will continue to harbor such narrow and petty prejudice.”

Though it is clear Chisholm sought the support of a united party, she was also explicit in her desire to bring together two groups to which she has dual membership: women and black people. After all, she opens her campaign announcement speech like this:

“I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that.”

The film’s archival footage is rich with evidence of her attempting to demonstrate her goal to encourage her party toward inclusiveness. We see her move with total confidence and self-possession through crowds of supporters on the campaign trail, on voter registration drives, and facing crowds of thousands. What is perhaps the most remarkable thing about her political presence is she seems to address each audience she encounters with an exacting sense of urgency to motivate all people to seize the rights and privileges of full citizenship. In interviews and behind-the-scenes campaign footage, Chisholm comes across as almost unbelievably authentic (especially for a politician), and embodies the film’s subtitle (taken from her 1970 political autobiography): she was truly “unbought” when it came to her refusal to make political deals that would compromise her constituents and “unbossed” by those who have her remain firmly entrenched in the status quo she was elected to challenge.

Although it’s no spoiler to say that she lost the bid to George McGovern (who would lose to Nixon), the film’s real dramatic force is in the enduring impact felt by those who would go on to realize their own political power as a result of Chisholm’s courageous work. For instance, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) recalls when she first met Chisholm and joined the campaign. At the time she was both a student on public assistance and a single mother, and she remembers what Chisholm told her about her own will to act: “[She] told me, no matter what I do in life, use your power judiciously, use it with humility, but use it.”

I could spend all day quoting Chisholm; her famous 1969 speech on “Equal Rights for Women,” for instance, remains as relevant today as it did then (sadly). But rather than do that here, I’ll turn to reading and researching the words and history of a great human being who, as the Shola Lynch said, possesses “a story is an important reminder of the power of a dedicated individual to make a difference.”

Meet the Women of ‘The Flow’

The first season was released in February 2014, and features the animated banter of Linda Dianne, Delly P, Nicole Ryan, and Kelly Lyn. These women are earnest, joyful, and excited to talk with each and share their experiences about topics that include (but are not limited to): period shits, gender representation in the media, and their feminist roles models in real life and television.

If you’re in the mood for some candid and righteous yet light-hearted conversation among millennial feminists, then look no further than The Flow. Though the tableau is a familiar one—four women seated on coaches with mugs of tea in hand holding forth on popular culture—the content of their dialogue is far from the daytime registers of The View or The Talk, the likes of which I only catch when stuck in waiting rooms. That’s another way of saying The Flow is well worth your time (trust me, you have all of 20 minutes to spare). The first season was released in February 2014, and features the animated banter of Linda Dianne, Delly P, Nicole Ryan, and Kelly Lyn. These women are earnest, joyful, and excited to talk with each and share their experiences about topics that include (but are not limited to): period shits, gender representation in the media, and their feminist roles models in real life and television. Each of the three episodes has a companion confessional video wherein we get a snapshot of each woman’s perspective on the given topic of the main episode. This structure works well to help us viewers get to know each woman a bit more on her own terms, which isn’t something conveyed in the group discussions.

Delly P, Nicole Ryan, Linda Dianne, Kelly Lyn

Though season one is brief, The Flow manages to pack in a lot of intelligent talk about media that deserves the hype. Viewers will likely be familiar with films like Miss Representation, shows like Orange in the New Black, and especially the amazing actor/activist Laverne Cox, but I hadn’t heard of nor seen the video “Shark Week” by the Brooklyn-based rap group Hand Job Academy. Without spoiling too much—because there really are no words—let’s just say “shark week” is a euphemism for menstruation. But that’s where the politeness ends. This photo should be enough to entice:

In addition to running through their own shorthand, such as “Crimson Tide” and “The Original O.B.” (my favorite was always Antietam: the bloodiest day of the Civil War), the confessional episode reveals each women’s narrative of the memory of when she got her first period. Though the details differ from story to story, the common refrain was that Linda Dianne, Delly P, Nicole Ryan, and Kelly Lyn each took pride in their experiences, mostly made positive thanks to the supportive women who were there to supply them with reassurance and maxi pads(or in Delly’s case, chocolate, too). There’s a wonderful lightness and lack of shame in these stories that I found resonant and refreshing (particularly compared to the pain endured by many women of older generations; see The Vagina Monologues). Here’s to seeing where The Flows goes next month in season two.

‘Broad City’: Hilarious, Lazy Girls at the Party

‘Broad City,’ which first appeared as a web series in 2009, shows us two women who lack ambition in a way that is almost radical—if only because we rarely see women acting irresponsibly without being punished for it.

Let me first make it clear that the title of this post is intended as a celebration of two things: 1) Amy Poehler, who, in addition to being a brilliant comedy writer, performer, and founder of Smart Girls at the Party, is the executive producer of the new Comedy Central series Broad City and 2) That we finally have some representations of funny women on TV who get to be every bit as guiltlessly unmotivated as their male counterparts. The characters that Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer created and depict are silly, charming, and always have each other’s backs—no matter how absurd or ill-advised the scenario. On its face you might think that another show about best friends in their 20s living in Brooklyn and Queens will cover familiar territory, thanks to Girls. You would be wrong. Most of the women in Lena Dunham’s world are not unlike some of our other (beloved!) women characters like Leslie Knope, Liz Lemon, and Mindy Lahiri in that they are wrestling with personal and professional issues that can often be traced to the anxiety inherited by women over whether they can “have it all.” Sure, Hannah Horvath might be lazy at times, but she is nothing if not driven by ambition to establish herself as a writer. Broad City, which first appeared as a web series in 2009, shows us two women who lack ambition in a way that is almost radical—if only because we rarely see women acting irresponsibly without being punished for it.

I say “punished” because Abbi and Ilana get away with a lot on Broad City, and we get to enjoy the thrills of their bad decisions and improbably mild consequences. In the first episode, we see Ilana sitting bored at her job, where she makes it clear to her boss that since the paychecks are delayed, she has no intention of staying to work. However, she does have her sights set on one particular goal: to make enough money for a night out for her and Abbi to go to Lil’ Wayne show (she also plans to seduce him). Her hope is to raise $200—for tickets, drinks, and weed—and she needs to convince her best friend to blow off her custodial job at a gym to help execute her plan. Abbi is the less reckless of the two (she tells Ilana that she’s might not be up for the show that because she’s “really excited about a cashew stir fry” she made for the week), but willingly capitulates to her best friend’s scheming (as she does throughout the series).

Their first attempt to earn money takes the form of bucket drumming in Central Park, where their only fan is Ilana’s friend-with-benefit Lincoln, played by Hannibal Buress (one the best stand-up comics working today). When busking proves fruitless, Abbi and Ilana must resort to Plan B: cleaning creepy Fred Armisen’s apartment in their underwear while he luridly gazes upon them from behind drapes. Did I mention that he’s also wearing footie pajamas? This scene is brilliant physical comedy, and refreshingly turns what could be humiliating into something aggressively funny. Without spoiling too much of the rest of the episode, let’s just say that Ilana and Abbi end up back where they started: video-chatting with each other as they nurse hangovers.

In addition to being great writers, Jacobson and Glazer are a delight to watch, (as is both the supporting cast and cameos performances Rachel Dratch and Janeane Garofalo). Abbi and Ilana’s is a female friendship in which both women enable and affirm the other even as they make ridiculous choices—which is what friends are for.

The Quiet Love of Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in ‘The Savages’

Wendy has fantasies of setting up Lenny in bucolic quarters in the mountains of Vermont where he can live with independence and comfort. But given the level of Lenny’s dementia and their lack of resources, Wendy has to let go of those dreams and settle for the facility Jon selects, which is far more modest, in Buffalo, with costs covered by Medicare. Another director might have tried to seize the dramatic content of such a conflict, as there’s no downplaying the seriousness of what it means to provide comfort and care to the beloved elderly one’s family. Jenkins, however, brings the funny rather than the dour. When Wendy and Jon take Lenny to a high-end facility for an interview to see if his mental acuity meets their criteria for admission, Wendy attempts to coach her father into giving the correct answers to such questions as “What city are you in right now?” That Lenny doesn’t know is sad, but Wendy’s earnestness to help him cheat is, somehow, delightfully absurd. Jon gets annoyed at his sister, but recognizes the difficulty she’s having with the situation and gently lets her be.

I’ve loved Tamara Jenkins since the first time I saw her film The Slums of Beverly Hills, the 1998 coming-of-age story that put Natasha Lyonne on the map. In addition to being a great movie with top-notch performances by Lyonne, Alan Arkin, and Marisa Tomei, Jenkins shows off her talents as a writer/director willing to show the unsightly, awkward, deeply sad and at once hilarious parts of growing up on the economic margins. The funny moments are made even more so because you don’t seem them coming. As unlikely as you’d be to find a comedic film set in Los Angeles that explores what it means to be a lower-middle-class teenage girl, it would be even more of a rarity to encounter one that delves into what it means to be lower-middle-class adult siblings coping with an estranged parent’s descent into old age and dementia. But that’s just what Jenkins gave us in her 2007 follow-up, The Savages.

If you’re looking to catch up on any Philip Seymour Hoffman films since we lost him earlier this month then that’s reason enough to watch this film—but only one of many. Here’s another: Hoffman plays opposite Laura Linney, who’s always amazing to watch. The two are Jon and Wendy, brother and sister who must wearily confront the necessity of managing the last days of their father’s life. From the first scene we are faced with the reality of the ugliness that is mental and physical decline: we see their father, Lenny, played by Philip Bosco, being castigated by a home health aide, Eduardo, for not flushing the toilet. We then watch as Lenny walks to the bathroom, and then an uncomfortable amount of time passes until Eduardo goes to check on him, only to find that Lenny’s written the word “Prick” on the wall with his feces. From this point forward it is clear that Jenkins is going to put us front and center with the unrelenting intimacy created when family must deal with each other’s shit.

Shortly after the fecal incident we meet Wendy, a woman in her later 30s sitting in a drab office in Manhattan at what can only be a temp job. Like any aspiring artist stuck at a desk, she is surreptitiously pirating postage, photocopying, and miscellaneous office goodies to service her application process to win grant funding; Wendy’s a playwright shopping around a semi-autobiographical work about her childhood called Wake Me When It’s Over. A combination of her life’s accoutrements tells us she’s not where she wants to be: the temp job, Raisin Bran for dinner, a married man whose dog accompanies him to her apartment when he can steal away for a tryst. We very quickly learn that Wendy is not well-practiced at being honest with herself—or those closest to her. She knows the art of telling people the half-truth if it will earn her some sympathy and/or avoid being scrutinized. Wendy gets a call from Arizona to find that her father, Lenny, is “writing with his shit!” (as she exclaims on the phone to Jon), and her overly righteous response tells us even more about her: she wants to rise to the occasion and save the day by caring for her father who never cared for her.

Jon is far more pragmatic and less willing to give too much compassionate ground to a parent whose absence meant he had to step up and doing a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting for his younger sister. Like Wendy, Jon studies theater, but from an academic side as a professor in Buffalo, New York—a contrast that Jenkins beautifully maps onto their personalities, but with a light touch. Wendy and Jon are far from types, and their sibling dynamic is one marked by distant respect for each other without the pretense of fully understanding the other’s choices. They are not entirely free of judgment and resentment, but they demonstrate ease and kindness toward one another far more often than ire. At the core of their tense moments is the central issue they must reckon with: their father has dementia and they must put him in a nursing home and watch him die.

When the inevitable does happen, and Wendy and Jon are free of the obligation that brought them together in a shared purpose, they quietly return to their lives. As is often the case in real life, there is no redemption in their father’s death. Jenkins does give us a kind of postscript wherein Wendy and Jon are still themselves, still trying to do the work that defines them, but they are somehow lighter after having endured Lenny’s illness and death. For one thing, they both make progress moving ahead in ways they were previously stalled (I know that’s vague but I don’t want to spoil too much). Most importantly, though, they have arrived as siblings who want to stay connected even without the anchor of obligation; rather than need each other to fit an idea of family, they just want each other to be happy.

The Life and Art of Mercedes Sosa

I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary ‘Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America.’ The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.

I’m not quick to apply the word “intimate” followed by “portrait” to anything outside of the Lifetime series by the same name, but this description accurately characterizes Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America. The film is a retrospective of the Argentinian alto whose career spanned 60 years and encompassed the tumult of 20th century political and cultural shifts in Latin America.

Sosa was born in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán, where she and siblings went to bed hungry more often than not. At the age of 15 she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months, much to the chagrin of her parents, who at the time did not think highly of folk music. She started her career in Tucumán and performed under the name Gladys Osorio. In 1957, she married Manuel Óscar Matus and together with Armando Tejada Gomez and Jose Segovia, they created the manifesto of the “Nuevo Cancionero”: a people’s movement anchored in traditional Argentinian folk music and poetry. Sosa began performing and recording music under her given name, and soon drew much attention for her powerful voice and fervent commitment to championing the rights of the poor and oppressed in Latin America. As she says in one of the many interviews incorporated in the film, “The life of people in America is a suffering people. They are a very poor people. They don’t deserve this poverty. We’ve been robbed of so much, really.” In the early 1970s, she recorded concept albums that celebrated the art and music of Latin American poets and composers, like the Chilean poet and folk musician Violeta Parra. Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida” would become one of Sosa’s signature songs. Even translated into English and flat on the page, the lyrics are beautiful, and in Sosa’s voice truly transcendent:

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two stars, which when I open them,
Perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the tall sky its starry backdrop,
And within the multitudes the one that I love.

By 1975 Sosa herself would be robbed of the freedom to perform in her home province, and many other sites in Argentina, due to increasing presence of a military dictatorship, which would install Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976. Targeted as a communist, she started receiving death threats and was forced to leave Argentina after being arrested on stage in 1979. In an interview reflecting on this Sosa says, “Kicking me out was a big mistake because they let loose on the world a famous artist. And in Europe the press was already against them.” In 1982 she returned from exile in Europe to sing in Argentina, and gave a series of performances at the Opera Theatre in Buenos Aires, where she invited many fellow musicians to join her. The recordings from these performances have since become well known, especially Sosa’s version of “Solo le Pido a Dios,” written by León Gieco (who also joins her in performing the song in the film). This song in particular has an anthemic quality, and it didn’t surprise me to learn it’s been covered by artists as wide ranging as Bruce Springsteen and Shakira. Until her death in 2009 at age 74, Sosa would go on to tour extensively and even collaborate with artists like Renee Perez.

While the expansive collection of still photographs and concert and interview footage comprising the main source material of the film make Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America a rich and inspiring viewing experience, there’s a subtler element that adds a sweet, if melancholic depth: that Sosa’s adult son Fabián Matus is our principal guide through his mother’s life. In his conversations with friends and family who have known his mother longer than he’s been alive, Matus quietly seeks the truth of his mother’s motivations and emotional life. We feel as though we’re seated at the dining room table as he hears from one his mother’s closest friends that his father mistreated and abandoned his mother. Though we don’t know what Matus knew before this scene (or what he went on to find out later, if anything), there is gravitas in these pauses, in the way the subjects take time to think of exactly what they want to tell Matus about the woman they knew as Mercedes Sosa, their friend and sister. Beyond being just a fascinating and well-constructed portrait of a great artist, Vila’s film is a love letter conceived of by her son and generously shared with audiences who, like myself, have the great delight of coming to her art in the afterlife that is her musical legacy.